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.
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