capture him, wounding three of them with his machete.

He was tried by a military court for bearing arms against the
government, and sentenced 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 19th of January, 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 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 mists, although it was past five o'clock. It
lighted a plain two miles in extent broken by ridges and gullies and
covered with thick, high grass and with bunches of cactus and palmetto.
In the hollow of the ridges the mist lay like broad lakes of water, and