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 the surface.

“Senores,” he said, “no man can enjoy a hanging with a dry throat.”

Thus he turned their attention a while from the business in hand, changing their thoughts from the stout neck of the prisoner to their own throats, wondering were they dry; and you do not wonder long about this in the south without finding that what you feared is true.  And then he let them see the two great bottles, all full of wine, for the invention of the false bottom that gives to our champagne-bottles the place they rightly hold among famous deceptions had not as yet been discovered.

“It is true,” said la Garda.  And Rodriguez made Morano put one of the bottles away in a piece of a sack that he carried:  and when la Garda saw one of the two bottles disappear it somehow decided them to have the other, though how this came to be so there is no saying; and thus the hanging was postponed again.

Now the drink was a yellow wine, sweet and heavy and stronger than our port; only our whisky could out-triumph it, but there in the warm south it answered its purpose.  Rodriguez beckoned Morano up and offered the bottle to one of la Garda; but scarcely had he put it to his lips when Rodriguez bade him stop, saying that he had had his share.  And he did the same with the next man.

Now there be few things indeed which la Garda resent more than meagre hospitality in the matter of drink, and with all their wits striving to cope with this vicious defect in Rodriguez, as they rightly or wrongly regarded it, how should they have any to spare for obvious precautions?  As the third man drank, Rodriguez turned to speak to Morano; and the representative of the law took such advantage of an opportunity that he feared to be fleeting, that when Rodriguez turned round again the bottle was just half empty.  Rodriguez had timed it very nicely.

Next Rodriguez put the bottle to his lips and held it there a little time, while the fourth man of the law, who was guarding the prisoner, watched Rodriguez wistfully, and afterwards Morano, who took the bottle next.  Yet neither Rodriguez nor Morano drank.