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them merrily. The man they proposed to hang was a stranger too. He appeared at first to be as stout as Morano,
and he was nearly half a foot taller, but his stoutness turned out to be sheer muscle. The broad man was clothed
in old brown leather and had blue eyes.
Now there was something about the poise of Rodriguez' young head which gave him an air not unlike that
which the King himself sometimes wore when he went courting. It suited his noble sword and his merry plume.
When la Garda saw him they were all politeness at once, and invited him to see the hanging, for which Rodriguez
thanked them with amplest courtesy.
"It is not a bull-fight," said the chief of la Garda almost apologetically. But Rodriguez waved aside his
deprecations and declared himself charmed at the prospect of a hanging.
Bear with me, reader, while I champion a bad cause and seek to palliate what is inexcusable. As we travel
about the world on our way through life we meet and pass here and there, in peace or in war, other men,
fellow-travellers: and sometimes there is no more than time for a glance, eye to eye. And in that glance you see
the sort of man: and chiefly there are two sorts. The one sort always brooding, always planning; mean, silent
men, collecting properties and money; keeping the law on their side, keeping everything on their side; except
women and heaven, and the late, leisurely judgment of simple people: and the others merry folk, whose eyes
twinkle, whose money flies, who will sooner laugh than plan, who seem to inherit rightfully the happiness that the
others plot for, and fail to come by with all their schemes. In the man who was to provide the entertainment
Rodriguez recognised the second kind.
Now even though the law had caught a saint that had strayed too far outside the boundary of Heaven, and
desired to hang him, Rodriguez knew that it was his duty to help the law while help was needed, and to applaud
after the thing was done. The law to Rodriguez was the most sacred thing man had made, if indeed it were not
divine; but since the privilege that two days ago had afforded him of studying it more closely, it appeared to him
the blindest, silliest thing with which he had had to do since the kittens were drowned that his cat Tabitharina
had had at Arguento Harez.
It was in this deplorable state of mind that Rodriguez' glance fell on the merry eyes and the solemn
predicament of the man in the leather coat, standing pinioned under a long branch of the oak-tree: and he
determined from that moment to disappoint la Garda and, I fear also, my reader, perhaps to disappoint you, of the
hanging that they at least had promised themselves.
"Think you," said Rodriguez, "that for so stout a knave this branch of yours suffices?"
Now it was an excellent branch. But it was not so much Rodriguez' words as the anxious way in which he
looked at the branch that aroused the anxieties of la Garda: and soon they were looking about to find a better
tree; and when four men start doing this in a wood time quickly passes. Meanwhile Morano drew near, and
Rodriguez went to meet him.
"Master," said Morano, all out of breath, "they had no bacon. But I got these two bottles of wine. It is strong
wine, which is a rare deluder of the senses, which will need to be deluded if we are to go hungry."
Rodriguez was about to cut short Morano's chatter when he thought of a use for the wine, and was silent a
moment. And as he pondered Morano looked up and saw la Garda and at the same time perceived the situation,
for he had as quick an eye for a bad business as any man.
"No one with the horses," was his comment; for they were tethered a little apart. But Rodriguez' mind had
already explored a surer method than the one that Morano seemed to be contemplating. This method he told
Morano. And now, from little tugs that they were giving to the doubled rope that hung over the branch of the
oak tree, it was clear enough that the men of the law were returning to their confidence in that very sufficient
branch.
They looked up with questions ripe to drop from their lips when they saw Rodriguez returning with Morano.
But before one of them spoke Morano flung to them from far off a little piece of his wisdom: for cast a truth into
an occasion and it will always trouble the waters, usually stirring up contradiction, but always bringing something to
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