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