Archie was willing enough to tell all about himself. He liked this man, in spite of his being with the rebels, and he felt that he would be able to make friends with him if he were careful to do so. And the best plan seemed to be for him to tell all about himself, how he happened to go to New York, and how he had been sent out here as a boy correspondent for the Enterprise. The man from Arizona listened to the recital with open mouth and eyes, and he frequently laughed outright at some of the experiences Archie described. When the narrative was finished, he seized Archie’s hand, and said, “My name’s Bill Hickson, and you can count on me after this fer a friend, youngster. I’ll swan if I ever heard tell of sich nerve in my life. I’ll see that you get out of this scrape all right, but you must be careful to keep up appearances of being under guard. I’m a big-bug in this Filipino shack, but I wouldn’t dare to let you out openly. So you jist kind of lay around and look despondent, and depend on me to make things as easy for you as I can. You kin come down-stairs now, if you like, and I’ll present you to my friends. There don’t none of ‘em speak no English but me, and all I can do is to interduce you, and tell ‘em that you ain’t no spy, and that you are very sorry you ever ran up agin this here town. And I guess I’ll be expressin’ your sentiments exactly, won’t I?” Archie nodded, but in his heart he felt that he wasn’t sorry he had run up against the town. This Bill Hickson, in himself, was a character worth going miles to meet, and if what he said was true, Archie stood a good chance of seeing the notorious Aguinaldo, with his army of Filipinos, before the day was over. When he reached the lower floor, he found several men lounging about in another poorly furnished room, and they were all similar in appearance to the men he had seen at the door the night before. They looked at him in an indifferent way, and didn’t seem surprised that he should be walking about without restraint. Bill Hickson stepped up to some of them, and, after a few words in some language Archie didn’t understand, motioned for the boy to step up. He was told to shake hands with “all the gents,” and after he had done so he was offered a cigar, and Archie began to realise that it was a very good thing that he had a friend at the Filipino court. He thought, too, that if these men were samples, Aguinaldo had a very poor lot of retainers, and later on he perceived the real cause for the failure of the rebels to do anything more than keep up a constant retreat. It was plain to see that the followers of the rebel leader were “in it for what it was worth.” They had no difficulty, any of them, in getting enough to eat, and often they had opportunities to enjoy themselves in great fashion by taking possession of some Filipino village and ejecting the inmates of some particularly fine house, with a well-stocked wine-cellar.