verifying the signature." "But what signature?" I wondered to
myself, reflecting that he had as yet had none of mine. Could it be the
signature of my New York banker or my London one? I repaired once
more to the window, after another wait, and said in polite but firm
Castilian, "Do me the favor to return me my letter." A commotion
of protest took place within the barrier, followed by the repeated
explanation that the director was verifying the signature. I returned
to toy place and considered that the suspicious document which I had
presented bore record of moneys drawn in London, in Paris, in Tours, in
San Sebastian, which ought to have allayed all suspicion; then for the
last time I repaired to the window; more in anger now than in sorrow,
and gathered nay severest Spanish together for a final demand: "Do me
the favor to give me back my letter _without the pounds sterling."_ The
clerks consulted together; one of them decided to go to the director's
room, and after a dignified delay he came back with my letter, and
dashed it down before me with the only rudeness I experienced in Spain.

I was glad to get it on any terms; it was only too probable that it
would have been returned without the money if I had not demanded it;
and I did what I could with the fact that this amusing financial
transaction, involving a total of fifty dollars, had taken place in the
chief banking-house of one of the commercial and industrial centers of
the country. Valladolid is among other works the seat of the locomotive
works of the northern railway lines, and as these machines average
a speed of twenty-five miles an hour with express trains, it seemed
strange to me that something like their rapidity should not have
governed the action of that bank director in forcing me to ask back my
discredited letter of credit.

XI

That evening the young voices and the young feet began to chirp again
under our sun balcony. But there had been no sun in it since noon and
presently a cold thin rain was falling and driving the promenaders under
the arcades, where they were perhaps not unhappier for being closely
massed. We missed the prettiness of the spectacle, though as yet we did
not know that it was the only one of the sort we might hope to see in
Spain, where women walk little indoors, and when they go out, drive and
increase in the sort of loveliness which may be weighed and measured.
Even under the arcades the promenade ceased early and in the