“Harrison’s a softy,” grunted one of the men. “Take hold, sergeant. He’s fainted, I guess.”
The form was placed in an unused storeroom. When the news went round the men came to view it, not out of curiosity, but to show respect such as they would pay to their own dead.
“This is the way I make it out,” said the sergeant, sagely. “The girl was killed by Aguinaldo’s gang, and it must have been because she spoke a good word for our people.”
“And we’ll take it out of their hides when the time comes,” said one of the soldiers, snapping his jaws together, which resolution the regiment unanimously adopted. Even the chaplain refrained from chiding when he heard of it. He knew his flock.
There being no way of finding out anything about the girl, a fund was quickly collected and arrangements made for the funeral. Several hundred soldiers followed the hearse to the cemetery at El Paco.
The regimental chaplain read the regulation burial service, while the men stood with bared heads. They placed at the head of the freshly made mound a plain board that read:
FOUND IN THE PASIG.
After the last soldier had gone, a cowering thing walked unsteadily up to the grave, and, kneeling beside it, laid down a cluster of green leaves.
“By God! I did love her. I did,” he muttered, continuously. He drew a pencil from his pocket and scratched her name on the board: “Simplicia.”
And his youth was buried there.