A Year From a Reporters Note book

farm. He was taken, in December of 1896, by a force of the Guardia Civile, the corps d'élite of the Spanish army, and defended himself when they tried to capture him, wounding three of them with his machete. He was tried by a military court for bearing arms against the government, andsentenced to be shot by a fusillade some morning before sunrise. Previous to execution he was confined in the military prison of Santa Clara with thirty other insurgents, all of whom were sentenced to be shot, one after the other, on mornings following the execution of Rodriguez. His execution took place the morning of the i gth of January, 1897, at a place a half- mile distant from the city, on the great plain that stretches from the forts out to the hills, beyond which Rodriguez had lived for nineteen years. At the time of his death he was twenty years old. I witnessed his execution, and what follows is an account of the way he went to death. The young man's friends could not be present, for it was impossible for them to show themselves in that crowd and that place with wisdom or without distress, and I like to think that, although Rodriguez could not know it, there was one person present when he died who felt keenly for THE DEATH OF RODRIGUEZ him, and who was a sympathetic though unwilling spectator. There had been a full moon the night preceding the execution, and when the squad of soldiers marched out from town it was still shining brightly through the mi...