"Listen to me. Everything is to proceed as ordered and according to army regulations except one thing. The rifles which are to be fired at you will be loaded with blank cartridges. When the squad fires you must fall as if--as if you were dead. Then you will be put in a coffin and brought to me for burial. Then you will come to life. That is all."
She smiled into her son's face with a great gladness and patted his hands.
"Afterward," she said, "you will grow a beard and generally disguise yourself. It is thus that the colonel thinks he can best make use of your knowledge and cleverness. And, of course, at the first opportunity you will give the colonel the slip and once more take your place in the patriot army."
"Of course," said Manuel; "I never meant to do what I pretended I would."
"I don't see the necessity of having a mock execution. It's not nice to have a lot of blank cartridges go off in your face."
"Nice!" The old woman sprang to her feet. She shook her finger in his face. "Nice! Haven't you any shred of courage in your great, hulking body? I don't believe you'll even face blank cartridges like a man--I believe you'll scream and blubber and be a shame to us all. You disgust me!" She spat on the floor. "Here I come to tell you that you are to be spared, and you're afraid to death of the means by which you are to go free. Why, I'd stand up to blank cartridges all day without turning a hair--or to bullets, for that matter--at two hundred metres, where I knew none of those Spanish idiots could hit me except by accident. I wouldn't expect you to play the man at a real execution or at anything real, but surely you can pull yourself together enough to play the man at a mock execution. What a chance! You can leave a reputation as great as your brother's--greater, even; you could crack jokes and burst out laughing just when they go to fire--"
Then, as suddenly as she had flown into a passion, she burst into tears and flung her arms about her boy and clung to him and mothered him until in the depths of his surly, craven heart he was touched and strengthened.
"Don't be afraid for me, mother," he said. "I do not like even the blank cartridges, God forgive me; but I shall not shame you."