Tandang Selo is a native wood-cutter that by industry and self-denial has saved a little money. He has a son, Tales, industrious and thrifty like himself. Tales works for a rich landowner and saves enough to buy two carabaos, to marry, and to accumulate a capital of several hundred pesos. He has ambition; he wishes to rise in the world. There is the jungle, unclaimed, untilled, but fertile. With his father, his wife, and children he goes into it, clears away the forest, and makes tillable fields. To cut for the first time the jungle turf is supposed to release a dangerous malaria. Of this, Tales’s wife and eldest child fall ill and die. The others continue to plant and to cultivate. As they begin to harvest the first crop, an agent of the friars appears, notifies them that the land belongs to one of the orders, and levies on the crop for the rent. Tales has every reason to believe that the claim is fraudulent, but he is only an Indio; the courts are organized against him and his people, and he pays tribute rather than risk a lawsuit. The next year the crops are good and the friars double the rent. Nevertheless the family works hard and saves a little money. The desire of the father’s heart is to send his eldest daughter, Juli, to school in Manila. Next year the rent is again increased, and the hope of education begins to fail. When the rent has risen from thirty to two hundred pesos, Tales refuses to pay the latest increase. Then the friars’ agent tells him to prepare to be evicted, for another tenant will come and till the fields Tales has won from the jungle. Tales applies to the courts for relief and is at once despoiled of his savings to pay the fees; likewise to satisfy the cormorants that batten upon every court proceeding. The farm is exposed to the raids of the tulisanes, or robbers. The invisible government has energy enough to play eavesdropper upon its own people, but makes scarcely an effort to restrain the banditti that hover in all the forests and often descend upon the towns, even large towns. To protect his fields from these vultures, Tales patrols them with a shot-gun and so terrifies the friars’ agents and the new tenant that the benevolent intention of turning him into the road must be abandoned until the lawsuit shall be decided.