It will later appear in this narrative that she was no ordinary woman; she came from a household that believed in liberty; she seems to have had a lofty spirit and a certain dignified self-mastery not rare among Filipino women. All about that part of the province she was known for her charities and good neighborliness. Her compatriots liked her. When, therefore, trudging along the shore road under the custody of a guard, she came at the evening of the first day to a village, she was received by its inhabitants with outpourings of sympathy and an invitation to lodge at the best house in the place instead of the village lockup as the judge had thoughtfully intended. She accepted the invitation; but with insatiable malice he had followed to see how his orders were obeyed. When he found the prisoner well bestowed instead of undergoing the miseries of the filthy prison, a madness of rage came upon him. He broke down the door of the house where his victim was sheltered, and, judge as he was, hesitated not to assault with his cane both the unlucky guard that had shown her lenity and the owner of the house that had received her. [6] He was as merciful as the judicial system he adorned; as intelligent and as well ordered. One of the least of its offenses was that this same hedge-row magistrate, at whose order she had been arrested to gratify his spite, was also to be the prosecuting attorney, when she should be brought to trial, and the judge before whom her fate should be decided. Mr. Mercado, meanwhile, had been putting forth every peaceful means to rescue his wife from this disaster. He had secured an attorney, who now presented a petition that her case should not be allowed to come before a judge so manifestly prejudiced against her. While Mrs. Mercado lay in jail, this appeal went before the supreme court, which sustained it and ordered the prisoner’s release. Before she could be set free the unjust judge brought a new charge against her, that her petition alleging prejudice on his part constituted contempt of court. On this she continued to be a prisoner until another appeal could be made to the supreme assize. When it had been reached and argued, Dogberry wisdom seated upon this august bench upheld the court below and found that such a petition was indeed contempt. How, that being the case, a prisoner could ever escape from a court or judge manifestly hostile to her, these eminent authorities did not suggest. But as Mrs. Mercado had already been in jail much longer than the term of the sentence passed upon her for contempt, they ordered her liberation. It was now to be supposed that the end of this business had been reached, vengeance had been satisfied, the crime of not feeding the lieutenant’s horse had been atoned for, and the woman might return to her family. Not in the Philippines, certainly. Before the prison doors could open, a new charge was brought against her.