Page:Under MacArthur in Luzon.djvu/246

218 trouble here?" she demanded, in a cold, quick voice, as if she was used to playing the mistress.

"Un Americano," replied one of the old men, with a low salute.

"And where did he come from?"

"We do not know. We found him here exactly as you see him. He seems to be down with the first stroke of a fever."

"Then he must be one of the prisoners who escaped—or else he got so sick that they abandoned him." The woman with the scar took a step forward and looked closely at Walter's face. "Impossible!" she ejaculated. "And yet how like!"

"How like what? " asked one of the other women.

"It does not concern you, Bamrogina." The woman with the scar turned to the men. "Carry him down to my house. No one shall say that he was left to die like a sick dog within sight of Biloguana. 'Twould bring evil to us all."

"You will take the pig to your house?" shrieked the woman called Bamrogina.

"Yes."

"And nurse him back to life—that he may kill our husbands and sons?"

"We can keep him a prisoner, if it be necessary."