e, even now?" he said. "Ah, ever faithful little
old man, but are you brave enough for the horror of it? Are you?"

Red eyeballs rolled upward in their sockets, and for a space met the
archduke's kindly gaze. Then the steady repellant hate in them seemed
disconcerted, and the withered form cowered under the touch of the pale
white hand. Inaudible words rattled in the old man's throat, and he
trembled, as though to turn and run. Maximilian regarded him
benevolently, thinking it a crisis of emotion.

"There, there," he said, "go if you wish. It's not well, you see, to
think of me so much. But you must not imagine that I am ungrateful. When
you believed yourself unseen, certainly when you had no hope of reward,
throughout my misfortunes, you have always hovered near me, on the
battlefield, and more lately under my prison window. Yes, yes, I have
seen. And now, and now I thank you." The bloodshot eyes roved the
ground, but did not lift again. "As humble, as loyal as a dog,"
Maximilian murmured as he turned away.

They indicated to him that he should take his place before a wall of
adobe blocks which had been piled together near the crest of the hill,
only a little lower than those very fortifications built by the
Imperialists themselves. With a gesture of assent, he complied. The
priests fell sorrowfully back behind the soldiers, and he and Miramon
and Mejia were alone together, three tragic isolated figures in a little
oblong patch of bare rocky hillside. One end of the oblong was the adobe
shield. The other three sides were walls of living men, massed shoulder
to shoulder, with bayonets pointed outward against the jostling peering
crowd. The three who were to die could now see no human being beyond the
dense, double row of soldiery. The remainder of earth for them was the
hollow square, bounded by the slouching backs clothed in blue, by the
white flats of the kepis, by the line of light playing over the thorns
of steel. Beyond was the early morning sun; above, the mystery of space.

Through the gap of an instant the shooting squads tramped in, nearer and
nearer, until they halted opposite the condemned. Maximilian then
perceived which squad was to be his own. It numbered seven tiradores and
a yellow, beardless officer. The seven were low, cumbersome, tawny, and
they shuffled awkwardly. Their stripling chief thrust out his stomach,
and he handled his large sword with an unaccustomed flourish. The
pompous severity was, a