en hovers near when the elements are at
strife. He was immensely satisfied with his diggings, he said, liked
the natives, and considered this a splendid chance for improving his
Spanish. He was reading "Don Quixote" in the vernacular. In a sense, I
looked upon his presence as a perfect godsend to us, as he came in most
appropriately as a _Deus ex machina_ to create the character of
Barbarossa's invented friend. O'Donovan was in good standing with the
Republicans of the town, as he was a staunch Republican himself, and
could spin yarns of the Republics of antiquity, and of the greatness of
Paris, and the glories of the United States. He was getting on famously
with Castilian, and was charmed with the redundancy of its vocabulary of
vituperation, which was only to be equalled by the Irish, of which his
father had been such a master. I made Barbarossa and my old chum known
to one another, and we dined together, pledging the past in a cup of
wine tempered with the living waters which bubbled up in the sacristy of
the parish church, and were distributed in bronze conduits through Irun.
After the meal and the meditative smoke of custom, O'Donovan sat down to
write a letter, which I guaranteed to post for him in France, and
Barbarossa and I sallied forth for a walk.

We were lounging about the Calle Mayor gazing at the escutcheons over
every hall-door--your bellows-mender and cobbler in this democratic town
were invariably of the seed of Noah in right line--when the alarm was
raised that fifty horses had been carried off by the Carlists almost at
the gates, and that two shots had been heard. The bugler sounded the
call "To arms," and forthwith a little company consisting of thirty-two
men, the bugler aforesaid, and a captain, set out at a quick step for a
high ground beside a signal-tower at one end of the town. We hurried
forward with them, and passed out through one of the four gates, on the
side next the mountains. The soldiers took a position on the slope of a
hill a couple of hundred yards from the gate, and Barbarossa and I
sheltered ourselves behind an orchard-wall, from which there was an
uninterrupted view of the billowy tract of meadow and pasture land
beneath, cut into patches by thick hedges. Quick on our heels emerged
from the town some half-dozen intrepid "volunteers of liberty," and the
inevitable small boy, a red cap stuck jauntily on three hairs of his
head and a large cigarette in his mouth. One of the volunte