One of the most detested instruments of the Spanish supremacy was a body of troops called the Civil Guard, [3] a kind of military police charged with ferreting out disloyalty and the signs of revolt. In the strained relations between Government and governed that followed the cruelties of 1872, it may be imagined how zestfully the Civil Guards pursued their peculiar calling. Domiciliary visits were their specialty, sudden and without warrant; a species of terrorism not then practised anywhere in Europe outside of Russia and Turkey. A squad of these visitors was in the habit of watching Calamba and the neighboring town of Biñan, and when it was Calamba that they were favoring with their attention, the lieutenant commanding quartered himself and his horse upon the Mercados, where he could find the best fare and the best fodder in town. The crops in 1871 had not been good in that region. Mr. Mercado’s store of fodder diminished until he had barely enough to supply his own live stock. When next the lieutenant came the situation was explained to him, and with every politeness he was asked to bait his horse elsewhere. He chose to take the request as an affront. Reciprocal hatreds were thick and rife around him; he conceived that in some way his honor as a Spaniard had been impaired by a “miserable Indio,” and he swore revenge. [4] About the same time the unfortunate Mercado managed to offend another Spaniard still more powerful. For all such visitors to Calamba he kept a kind of gratuitous hotel; hospitality was and is a sacred and inviolable rite among his people. The judge of the local district, conferring upon the Mercados thus the honor of his uninvited presence, fancied that his reception lacked something of cordiality and ceremony. As to this, he may have been right; in the hearts of most intelligent Filipinos of those days the feelings toward official Spaniards were not likely to be exuberantly warm. The judge, like the lieutenant before him, deemed his Spanish honor to have suffered and went away with a similar appetite for vengeance, a lust to which the example of their Government richly incited them. For judge and lieutenant the opportunity came more quickly than they could have hoped. At this neighboring town of Biñan lived José Alberto Realonda (formerly Alonzo), a half-brother of Mrs. Mercado. He was deservedly of mark in his province; his father had been an engineer whose abilities were recognized by Spain in an order of knighthood that the son inherited, an order equivalent to a baronetcy in England; José Alberto himself had been at school in Calcutta, spoke English well, and had traveled widely. It was at his home in Biñan that Sir John Bowring, [5] the English linguist and traveler, had been entertained; and Bowring had put into his book on the Philippines a graceful paragraph about his host and entertainment, the good taste with which the Realonda house was furnished, the excellent cooking set before its guests.