The robbers were but three, but they had plundered the unfortunate travellers as effectually as thirty could have done.

Now, all this was very pretty to hear as a tale, but not satisfactory to travellers who were going by the same road the next morning; and in the disagreeable barrack-room where our beds stood in long lines, we, the nine passengers of the "up" diligence, held a council, standing, like Mr.Macaulay's senators, and there decided on a most Christian line of conduct--that when the three bore down upon us, and the muzzle of the inevitable escopeta was poked in at our window, we would descend meekly, and at the command of "boca abajo," ("mouth downwards,") we would humiliate ourselves with our noses in the dirt, and be robbed quietly.

Having thus decided beforehand, according to the etiquette of the road, whether we were to fight or submit, and being tired with a long day's journey, we all turned in, and were fast asleep in a moment.
It seemed that almost directly afterwards the dirtiest man possible came round, and shook us till we were conscious; and we washed in the customary saucers, by the light of a real, flaring, smoking, Spanish lamp with a beak, exactly what the Romans used in Pompeii, except that this is of brass, not bronze.
With our eyes still half-shut we crawled into the kitchen for our morning chocolate, and demanded our bill.

Such a bill! One of us, a stout Spaniard, sent for the landlord and abused him in a set speech.
The "patron" divested his countenance of every trace of expression, scratched his head through his greasy nightcap, and stood listening patiently.

The stout man grew fiercer and fiercer, and wound up with a climax.