When he and the rest of them had discovered their common
error they had turned upon him and were now hounding him out of revenge.
The courtly General was as _distingue_ as ever as he addressed the
hard-headed jury of tradesmen before him. As what _canaille_ he must
have regarded them! What a position for the "Count de Tinoco"!
Then two officers entered the courtroom bearing the famous trunk of the
General between them. The top tray proved to contain thousands of
railroad tickets. The prosecutor requested the defendant to explain
their possession.
"Ah!" exclaimed Moreno, twirling his mustaches, "when I was General
under my King Don Carlos, in the Seven Years' War of '75 and also in
Catalonia in '80, I issued these tickets to wounded soldiers for their
return home. At the boundaries the Spanish tickets were exchanged for
French tickets." He looked as if he really meant it.
Then the prosecutor called his attention to the fact that most of them
bore the date of 1891 and were printed in French--not in Spanish. The
prisoner seemed greatly surprised and muttered under his breath vaguely
about "plots" and "conspiracies.
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