The servant took the vase carefully and placed it as commanded. Then he turned to Virginia with a face full of intense feeling. "Miss Virgie, I done carry messages for him all my days." The pathos of the soft voice was touching. "I wasn't to give this las' one to you less'n he neveh come back. An Mis' Virgie, Doctoh Carey won't neveh come back no mo'. But I kaint tell you yet jus' why he done taken hisself to the Fillippians, not yet." "Why do you think he will never come back? You think Thaine will come home again, don't you?" Virginia queried. "Oh, yas'm! yas'm! Misteh Thaine, he'll come back all right. But hit's done fo'casted in my bones that Doctoh Horace won't neveh come. An' when he don't, I'll tell you why he leff'n Grass Riveh, Kansas, for the Fillippians." CHAPTER XIX THE "FIGHTING TWENTIETH" Malolos and Bocaue's trenches know the Kansas yell; San Fernando and San Tomas the Kansas story swell; At Guiguinto's fiercest battle yon flag in honor flew; What roaring rifles kept it, all Luna's army knew; And high it swung o'er Caloocan, Bagbag and Marilao-- "Those raggedy Pops from Kansas" 'fore God they're heroes now. --Lieutenant-Colonel E. C. Little. Night had fallen on the city of Manila. Before it lay the bay whose waters lapped softly against pier and shipping. Behind it in the great arc of a circle stretched the American line of military outposts, guarded by sentinels. Beyond that line, north, east, and south, there radiated a tangle of roads and trails through little villages of nipa huts, past rice fields and jungles, marshes and rivers, into the very heart of Luzon. Manila was under American military government, but Luzon was in insurrection against all government, and a network of rebellious lines of enemies fretted every jungle, hid in every village, intrenched itself in every rice field, and banked its earthworks beyond every river. While Emilio Aguinaldo, the shrewd leader of an ignorant, half-savage peasantry, plotted craftily with his associates for the seizure of the rich capital of Luzon and dreamed of the autocratic power and heaps of looted treasure that he should soon control. For weeks in sight of the American outposts, the Filipinos had strengthened their trenches, and established their fortifications, the while they bided the hour of outbreak and slaughter of the despised Americanos, and the seizing of the rich booty afterward. Upon the Tondo road, running north from Manila to Caloocan, Thaine Aydelot, with a Kansas University comrade, was doing silent sentinel duty. The outpost was nearly a mile away from a bridge on the outskirts of Manila. In the attack imminent, this bridge would be one of the keys to the city, and the command had been given to hold it against all invaders at any cost.