Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/528

 The Cited. Don Alonzo Morelos, to appear beside me at the bar of God, one year from my death-day, and testify how I came to my end.'' There was a moment or two of deep silence among his awe-stricken hearers, and then they broke forth with excited murmurs. The judge signalled the officers to clear the court, and then left the bench. Morelos sat in his chair white to the lips. He seemed dazed, as from a blow. His fingers plied abstractedly among his papers, and his eyes were fixed upon the vacant bench. The court-room was quite empty before he came to himself, and with a scowl and a shrug he took up his hat and went home, taking a roundabout way to avoid the people. Guayos made no appeal, asked for no de lay. A week later he was hanged. At the execution an odd thing happened: the rope slipped a little and the knot working towards the front, left an impress there as of two crossed fingers. The friends of thé executed man took this to be a sign of grace. As for Morelos, a month had not passed after the trial ere a great change was noticed in him. His fine jet black locks began to turn white. He grew gray and dry in his complexion, his shoulders bent as beneath a heavy burden, his eyes lost their clearness and boldness, often a harried, hunted look came into them; he became in short a mere wreck of his former self. Everybody around him knew the cause and noted the signs of his decay. He was a marked man. Even the boys in the street knew him, and as he passed with bent head and hands clasped behind his back, they would whisper: "There goes El Citado." Gradually he appeared less and less in

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public. He neglected his practice, he re signed from his club, he shunned the society of his fellows, he walked abroad only at night. His old housekeeper told one of her friends that the man frequently paced the floor of his room till dawn, and that now and again he would mutter to himself and gesture as if striking something. Presently it was rumored that the grave of Guayos was haunted, a black figure having been seen kneeling before his tomb. One old woman declared that this watching, wait ing figure had horns and green eyes like a cat's; while another said it was merely the form of a man, taller, thinner, more bent than Guayos, therefore not his ghost. The months rolled by and at length came the anniversary of the hanging. There was now left in the lawyer hardly a vestige of his former manhood and power. All the pre vious day Morelos had shut himself up in his room, and all that evening and far into the night, the housekeeper had heard him pacing to and fro overhead. At mid night the woman retired. A little before dawn she found herself sitting bolt upright in bed. What had roused her she knew not. Nobody had called to her. Next moment she heard a faint sound of crumpling paper. Then a chair was roughly pushed back, and there sounded out a blood-curdling cry: "No, no! My God!" Then the house shook. Frightened half out of her senses the woman bolted her door and fell to praying. In the morning Don Alonzo Morelos was found lying dead on the floor of his chamber, and on his throat was a livid mark as of two crossed fingers. The citation had been obeyed.