"
"If you are fully recovered, senor," Rodriguez said, "my own sword
is at your disposal to beat him sore with the flat of it, or how
you will. Thus no dishonour shall touch your sword from the skin
of so vile a knave."
The stranger smiled: the idea appealed to him.
"You make a noble amend, senor," he said as he bowed over
Rodriguez' proffered sword.
Morano had not moved far, but stood near, wondering. "What should
a servant do if not work for his master?" he wondered. And how
work for him when dead? And dead, as it seemed to Morano, through
his own fault if he allowed any man to kill him when he perceived
him about to do so. He stood there puzzled. And suddenly he saw
the stranger coming angrily towards him in the clear moonlight
with a sword. Morano was frightened.
As the hidalgo came up to him he stretched out his left hand to
seize Morano by the shoulder. Up went the frying-pan, the stranger
parried, but against a stroke that no school taught or knew, and
for the second time he went down in the dust with a reeling head.
Rodriguez turned toward Morano and said to him ... No, realism is
all very well, and I know that my duty as author is to tell all
that happened, and I could win mighty praise as a bold,
unconventional writer; at the same time, some young lady will be
reading all this next year in some far country, or in twenty years
in England, and I would sooner she should not read what Rodriguez
said.
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