Chapter I: Introduction

To those whose love of adventure would cause them to plunge head-long into an abyss of vain glory, hoping at life's sunset to reap a harvest contrary to the seed that were sown, let me suggest that you pause first to read the story of "The Woman With a Stone Heart," Marie Sampalit, dare-devil of the Philippines.

Perhaps we might profitably meditate for a few moments on the musings of Whittier:

"The tissue of the life to be
We weave in colors all our own,
And in the field of destiny
We'll reap as we have sown."

--The Author.

DEDICATION

To Her, who, as a bride of only eighteen months, stood broken-hearted on the depot platform and bade me a tearful farewell as our train of soldier boys started to war; who later, while I was Ten Thousand miles away from home on soldier duty in the Philippine Islands, became a Mother; and who, unfortunately, three months thereafter, was called upon to lay our first-born, Oliver D. Coursey, into his snow-lined baby tomb amid the bleak silence of a cold winter's night, with no strong arm to bear her up in those awful hours of anguish and despair,

My Soldier Wife, Julia,

this book is most affectionately dedicated.

"Only a baby's grave,
Yet often we go and sit
By the little stone,
And thank God to own,
We are nearer heaven for it."

--O. W. Coursey.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Page

Marie Sampalit 10
Region Around Manila Bay 29
Admiral Dewey 39
Aguinaldo 61
Marie, Her Mother, etc. 82
Filipinos at Breakfast 100
End of the Boat-Battle 113
The Rescue 126
Floating Down The Rapids 129
General Lawton and Staff 139

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapters: Page

I. Love Defeated 9
II. First Shot of A New War 25
III. Avenged Her Lover's Death 41
IV. The Interval 57
V. Filipino Uprising 69
VI. As A Spy 81
VII. Off For Baler 93
VIII. The Gilmore Incident 105
IX. The American Prisoners 113
X. Death of General Lawton 131
XI. North-bound 141
XII. Crossing the Sierra Madres 153
XIII. Compensation 167