'You shall not escape from us again!'
The puppet, seeing death staring him in the face, was taken with such a violent fit of trembling that the joints of his wooden legs began to creak, and the sovereigns hidden under his tongue to clink.
'Now then,' demanded the assassins, 'will you open your mouth, yes or no? Ah! no answer? . . . Leave it to us: this time we will force you to open it! . . .'
And drawing out two long horrid knives as sharp as razors, clash . . . they attempted to stab him twice.
But the puppet, luckily for him, was made of very hard wood; the knives therefore broke into a thousand pieces, and the assassins were left with the handles in their hands staring at each other.
'I see what we must do,' said one of them. 'He must be hung! let us hang him!'
'Let us hang him!' repeated the other. Without loss of time they tied his arms behind him, passed a running noose round his throat, and then hung him to the branch of a tree called the Big Oak.
They then sat down on the grass and waited for his last struggle. But at the end of three hours the puppet's eyes were still open, his mouth closed, and he was kicking more than ever.
Losing patience they turned to Pinocchio and said in a bantering tone:
