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.”