Birds, beasts, serpents,
and poachers fled affrighted to the right and left of his course. He
came down upon the unsuspecting assassins like a mild Spanish
avalanche.
[Illustration]
"_Senores!_" he thundered, with a frightful scowl and a faint aroma of
garlic, "patter your _pater-nosters_ as fast as you conveniently may.
You have but ten minutes to exist. Has either of you a watch?"
Then might you have seen a guilty dismay over-spreading the faces of
two sinners, like a sudden snow paling twin mountain peaks. In the
presence of Death, Crime shuddered and sank into his boots. Conscience
stood appalled in the sight of Retribution. In vain the villains
essayed speech; each palsied tongue beat out upon the yielding air
some weak words of supplication, then clave to its proper concave. Two
pairs of brawny knees unsettled their knitted braces, and bent limply
beneath their loads of incarnate wickedness swaying unsteadily above.
With clenched hands and streaming eyes these wretched men prayed
silently. At this supreme moment an American gentleman sitting by,
with his heels upon a rotted oaken stump, tilted back his chair, laid
down his newspaper, and began operating upon a half-eaten apple-pie.
One glance at the title of that print--one look at that calm angular
face clasped in its crescent of crisp crust--and Don Hemstitch Blodoza
reeled, staggered like an exhausted spinning-top.
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