Hastily descending his tree, he wrapped his cloak about him and stood for some time, wishing he had a poniard.  Trying the temper of this upon his thumbnail, he found it much more amiable than his own.  It was a keen Toledo blade—­keen enough to sever a hare.  To nerve himself for the deadly work before him, he began thinking of a lady whom he had once met—­the lovely Donna Lavaca, beloved of El Toro-blanco.  Having thus wrought up his Castilian soul to a high pitch of jealously, he felt quite irresistible, and advanced towards the two ruffians with his poniard deftly latent in his flowing sleeve.  His mien was hostile, his stride puissant, his nose tip-tilted—­not to put too fine a point upon it, petallic.  Don Hemstitch was upon the war-path with all his might.  The forest trembled as he trode, the earth bent like thin ice beneath his heel.  Birds, beasts, serpents, and poachers fled affrighted to the right and left of his course.  He came down upon the unsuspecting assassins like a mild Spanish avalanche.

[Illustration]

“Senores!” he thundered, with a frightful scowl and a faint aroma of garlic, “patter your pater-nosters as fast as you conveniently may.  You have but ten minutes to exist.  Has either of you a watch?”

Then might you have seen a guilty dismay over-spreading the faces of two sinners, like a sudden snow paling twin mountain peaks.  In the presence of Death, Crime shuddered and sank into his boots.  Conscience stood appalled in the sight of Retribution.  In vain the villains essayed speech; each palsied tongue beat out upon the yielding air some weak words of supplication, then clave to its proper concave.  Two pairs of brawny knees unsettled their knitted braces, and bent limply beneath their loads of incarnate wickedness swaying unsteadily above.  With clenched hands and streaming eyes these wretched men prayed silently.  At this supreme moment an American gentleman sitting by, with his heels upon a rotted oaken stump, tilted back his chair, laid down his newspaper, and began operating upon a half-eaten apple-pie.  One glance at the title of that print—­one look at that calm angular face clasped in its crescent of crisp crust—­and Don Hemstitch Blodoza reeled, staggered like an exhausted spinning-top.  He spread his baffled hand upon his eyes, and sank heavily to earth!

“Saved! saved!” shrieked the penitent conspirators, springing to their feet.  The far deeps of the forest whispered in consultation, and a distant hillside echoed back the words.  “Saved!” sang the rocks—­“Saved!” the glad birds twittered from the leaves above.  The hare that Don Hemstitch Blodoza’s poniard would have severed limped awkwardly but confidently about, saying, “Saved!” as well as he knew how.

Explanation is needless.  The American gentleman was the Special Correspondent of the “New York Herald.”  It is tolerably well known that except beneath his searching eye no considerable event can occur—­and his whole attention was focused upon that apple-pie!