"A tall, powerfully-formed, and fair-complexioned man, who, contrary to the Spanish custom, was closely shaven, now came forward, and stated himself to be a farmer, or jardinero, at Mora and La Guardia. He had a large patch on his cheek, and kept one hand constantly thrust into the red and yellow sash which girt his waist. "Confronting me boldly and vindictively, with all the glare of hate a cold grey eye can pour, he accused me of destroying for firewood a statue of the Virgin at Mora, and swore to having seen the act committed. A growl of anger followed his evidence; and I found that shooting an alcalde's brother, and carrying off twenty mules, were mere jokes, compared to this. I was startled by his voice, which, assuredly, I had heard before--but where? What could be the origin of a charge so false, so strange, as sacrilege? I turned to question him, but he was at that moment ordered to withdraw. "'Señor Ayudante de Campo,' said Don José, 'read from the RECOPILACION of the military penalties the first article.' "'El que blasfamare el santo nombre de Dios, de la Vergén ó de los Santos, será immediamente preso y castigado por la primero vez con la,' &c. "'Read the fourth article, concerning outrage to divine images, for the prisoner has been alike sacrilegious and blasphemous.' "'El que con irreverencia y deliberation cannocida de desprecio ajare de obra las sagradas imagenes, ornamentos ó cualquierro de las casas dedicados al Divino culto, ó las hurtare, servá ahorcado,' &c. "'The plot thickens,' thought I. "In short, they sentenced me to be hanged. "The Marquis, as Governor of Ciudad Heal, dared to confirm this unjust sentence, which he directed should be put in execution in the Plaza, at eight o'clock on the following morning. "Far, far from aid and my comrades; wholly at the mercy of men, whose hearts the cunning charge of the last witness had totally closed against me; aware of the futility of denial and defiance, and the hopelessness of rescue or escape, I sat in a grated room of the public carcel, or gaol, of the town, almost stupefied by the suddenness, the shame, and opprobrium of my impending fate. 'Poets and painters,' says a certain writer, 'have ever made the estate of a man condemned to die one of their favourite themes of comment or description.' By heavens! I never met one of either which came within a thousand degrees of the agony I endured that night at Ciudad Real. I, a gentleman, a soldier, bearing on my person three wounds, won on that accursed Spanish soil; innocent of all they alleged; young, with a long life and rapid promotion before me, to be cut off thus--strangled like a garotted villain--hanged like a dog, to glut the noonday frenzy of a Spanish rabble! Horrible! I had often faced death without shrinking; but now, like a coward's, my whole soul shrunk from such a death as that which these Spaniards meted out to me.