under a crushing
rock, one against the wall; his head broken over upon his breast. The
pert young officer pointed his blade at three convulsive bodies, and
through each a last bullet sped, burying itself in the earth beneath.
The crowd pressed, surged, stood on tiptoe.

* * * * *

There was one other among the spectators, but keeping himself hidden,
whom Maximilian would have been concerned to see there. He was Driscoll.
He came to watch the shriveled derelict, Murguia. He came to stand guard
over a soul, Maximilian's. What peace that soul had found should not be
destroyed. And so he screened himself in the crowd, holding ready to
crush a viper whose fangs were heavy with poison. When Maximilian paused
and spoke to the old man, Driscoll was very near, near enough to hear,
and to strike. But the old man had only wheezed and mumbled. Though why
that old man did not utter a first word, though why he could not, will
never be explained. But this much is true, that the ambushed soul,
moving so calmly toward eternity, then stepping so near the coiled
serpent, was yet its own guardian, unwittingly.

Until the very end Driscoll staid there alert. The old man, baffled,
insatiate, might yet cry out what he knew. Driscoll's gaze never
relaxed. He felt as though he watched a murderer while the murder was
being done. But the old man only listened. Unable to see within the
hollow square, he listened, and waited. His lower jaw hung open, and
over his lip a white froth grew and grew, until it broke and trickled
down his chin. The red eyeballs gleamed ravenously, as still he waited.

"When this is over," Driscoll said to himself, "he'll plump down in a
fit and blow out. Else he'll go raving crazy. Lord, that look!"

When it _was_ over, Driscoll went to him. He had but to reach forth
a hand and fasten on his shoulder. He held him against a scurrying of
spectators, whom the tragedy's close had that instant brought to life.

"Here, Murgie, here's something that belongs to you," he said. "Well,
what's the matter? Take it, I don't want it."

The old man looked up. An ivory cross was dangling from the other's
fingers. The cross still showed bloodstains; no later flowing of blood
had washed _them_ away. But the father of Maria de la Luz stared,
stared vacantly at the trinket. The masterful, consuming rage of two
years past was gone out of his eyes. Instead they were watery and
senile. The brows