n and boys, who had been dragged out of their beds by the music,
moved about the ridges behind the soldiers, half-clothed, unshaven,
sleepy-eyed, yawning, stretching themselves nervously and shivering in
the cool, damp air of the morning.

Either owing to discipline or on account of the nature of their errand,
or because the men were still but half awake, there was no talking in the
ranks, and the soldiers stood motionless, leaning on their rifles, with
their backs turned to the town, looking out across the plain to the
hills.

The men in the crowd behind them were also grimly silent. They knew that
whatever they might say would be twisted into a word of sympathy for the
condemned man or a protest against the government. So no one spoke; even
the officers gave their orders in gruff whispers, and the men in the
crowd did not mix together, but looked suspiciously at one another and
kept apart.

As the light increased a mass of people came hurrying from the town with
two black figures leading them, and the soldiers drew up at attention,
and part of the double line fell back and left an opening in the square.

With us a condemned man walks only the short distance from his cell to
the scaffold or the electric chair, shielded from sight by the prison
walls, and it often occurs even then that the short journey is too much
for his strength and courage.

But the Spaniards on this morning made the prisoner walk for over a
half-mile across the broken surface of the fields. I expected to find
the man, no matter what his strength at other times might be, stumbling
and faltering on this cruel journey; but as he came nearer I saw that he
led all the others, that the priests on either side of him were taking
two steps to his one, and that they were tripping on their gowns and
stumbling over the hollows in their efforts to keep pace with him as he
walked, erect and soldierly, at a quick step in advance of them.

He had a handsome, gentle face of the peasant type, a light, pointed
beard, great wistful eyes, and a mass of curly black hair. He was
shockingly young for such a sacrifice, and looked more like a Neapolitan
than a Cuban. You could imagine him sitting on the quay at Naples or
Genoa lolling in the sun and showing his white teeth when he laughed.
Around his neck, hanging outside his linen blouse, he wore a new
scapular.

It seems a petty thing to have been pleased with at such a time, but I
confess to have felt a thri