He had often stopped to spend an hour or two with Ledesma on his prospering plantation. He liked Ledesma's sincere, old-school courtesy, and he liked him because Ledesma was known as an Americanista, looked upon the Americans as God-sent to guide his people out of their sloth and abysmal ignorance. But he gave up these visits following a day when he found the dark-eyed, ripe-bosomed daughter alone in the house and learned, in her flaming passion for him, that she had misunderstood the reason for his calls. The frequency of his trips to the outlying plantations had increased as the weeks went by, especially to the pitiful holdings of some of the poor natives. Malabanan's coming had been broadcasted across the land, and an uneasiness had settled over the Gulf, a vague fear Terry sought to allay. But Malabanan's record, a dark and dismal history of hideous crime for which he had been but half punished, was known throughout the country, and was the nightly subject of fearful conversation in every hut on every isolated plantation. Terry had ridden, alone, to the neglected settlement up the coast where the gang of roughs had rendezvous, but Malabanan was away. A dozen hard-looking natives had sullenly responded to his curt questions. None were working, though he had arrived during the cool of the afternoon and the fields cried for attention. In Davao, the town, he found consuming interest. Sleepy six days in the week it woke each Wednesday during the couple of hours the weekly steamer anchored offshore to discharge cargo into a lighter, drop a passenger or two, and send ashore the exiles' greatest balm--home mail. He came to know everybody: first the other government people--Lieutenant-Governor; Scout officers; Dr. Merchant, the district health officer; school teachers, native postmaster. Seldom a week passed that he failed to saunter into each of the Chinese tiendas, making the purchase of matches or other small articles the excuse for a half-hour's visit. Oftenest he went into Lan Yek's smelly little shop, for there the Bogobos brought their mountain hemp to trade for small agongs: tired from their heavy packing, they would squat down on the floor along the wall, one of them occasionally stepping to an agong to test it with deft contact of finger, all joining him in rapt study of its tone, measuring the duration of the lingering waves of sound. Terry learned, in time, that they found greatest merit in those agongs which rang longest to lightest stroke.