andering
charity-student of the old _Tuna_ converting his tales into courses in
picturesque geography. With hungry delight he recollected the abundant
milk of Galicia, the red sausages of Extramadura, the Castilian bread,
the Basque apples, the wines and ciders of all the districts he had
traversed, with his luggage on his shoulder. Guards were changed every
day,--some of them kind or indifferent, others ill-humored and cruel,
who made all the prisoners fear a couple of shots fired beyond the ruts
of the road, followed by the papers justifying the killing as having
been caused by an attempt at flight. With a certain nostalgia he evoked
the memory of mountains covered with snow or reddened and striped by the
sun; the slow procession along the white road that was lost in the
horizon, like an endless ribbon; the highlands, under the trees, in the
hot noon hours; the storms that assailed them upon the highways;
inundated ravines that forced them to camp out in the open; the arrival,
late at night, at certain town prisons, old convenes or abandoned
churches, in which every man hunted up a dry corner, protected from
draughts, where he could stretch his mat; the endless journey with all
the calm of a purposeless procession; the long halts in spots where life
was so monotonous that the presence of a group of prisoners was an
event; the urchins would come running up to the bars to speak with them,
while the girls, impelled by morbid curiosity, would approach within a
short distance, to hear their songs and their obscene language.

"Some mighty interesting travels, sir," continued the robber. "For those
of us who had good health and didn't drop by the roadside it was the
same as a strolling band of students. Now and then a drubbing, but who
pays any attention to such things!... They don't have these
_conductions_ now; prisoners are transported by railroad, caged up in
the cars. Besides, I am held for a criminal offense, and I must live
inside the walls... jailed for good."

And again he began to lament his bad luck, relating the final deed that
had landed him in jail.

It was a suffocating Sunday in July; an afternoon in which the streets
of Valencia seemed to be deserted, under the burning sun and a wind like
a furnace blast that came from the baked plains of the interior.
Everybody was at the bull-fight or at the seashore. _Magdalena_ was
approached by his friend _Chamorra_, an old prison and traveling
companion, who exercis