nd festival today,'' another said. ''The Fair of Liberty and from this day, when these are extinguished, the town and the land are ours.''
"''We thresh fascists today,'' said one, ''and out of the chaff comes the freedom of this pueblo.''
"''We must administer it well to deserve it,'' said another. ''Pilar,'' he said to me, ''when do we have a meeting for organization''
"''Immediately after this is completed,'' I told him. ''In the same building of the _Ayuntamiento_.''
"I was wearing one of the three-cornered patent leather hats of the _guardia civil_ as a joke and I had put the hammer down on the pistol, holding it with my thumb to lower it as I pulled on the trigger as seemed natural, and the pistol was held in a rope I had around my waist, the long barrel stuck under the rope. And when I put it on the joke seemed very good to me, although afterwards I wished I had taken the holster of the pistol instead of the hat. But one of the men in the line said to me, ''Pilar, daughter. It seems to me bad taste for thee to wear that hat. Now we have finished with such things as the _guardia civil_.''
"''Then,'' I said, ''I will take it off.'' And I did.
"''Give it to me,'' he said. ''It should be destroyed.''
"And as we were at the far end of the line where the walk runs along the cliff by the river, he took the hat in his hand and sailed it off over the cliff with the motion a herdsman makes throwing a stone underhand at the bulls to herd them. The hat sailed far out into space and we could see it smaller and smaller, the patent leather shining in the clear air, sailing down to the river. I looked back over the square and at all the windows and all the balconies there were people crowded and there was the double line of men across the square to the doorway of the _Ayuntamiento_ and the crowd swarmed Outside against the windows of that building and there was the noise of many people talking, and then I heard a shout and some one said ''Here comes the first one,'' and it was Don Benito Garcia, the Mayor, and he came out bareheaded walking slowly from the door and down the porch and nothing happened; and he walked between the line of men with the flails and nothing happened. He passed two men, four men, eight men, ten men and nothing happened and he was walking between that line of men, his head up, his fat face gray, his eyes looking ahead and then flickering from side to side and walking steadily. And nothing happened.$$思$$兔$$在$$線$$閱$$讀$$