se to restrain them they seized upon the
earliest pretext to get away from the spot.

Glad were they when some of their gentlemen acquaintances, who chanced
to be passing the place, came up and proposed escorting them home. A
service accepted and, it need not be said, offered with as much alacrity
as it was received.

Their departure had no effect in dispersing the crowd which had gathered
by the Alamedas Gate. A spot signalised by an episode so odd and
original, was not to be forsaken in that quick inconsiderate way.
Instead, the throng grew quicker, until the street for a long stretch
was packed full of people, close as they could stand. Only one part of
it remained unoccupied, the central list showing the open sewer with its
bordering of black mud. In their holiday attire the populace declined
invading this, though they stood wedging one another along its edge;
their faces turned towards it, with hilarity in their looks and laughter
on their lips. It was just the sort of spectacle to please them; the
sentries in a row--for they had now sneaked back to their post--
appearing terribly crestfallen, while those over whom they stood guard
seemed, on the contrary, cheerful--as though expecting soon to be
released from their chains. With them it was the _esprit de corps_ of
the galley slave, glad to see a comrade escape from their common misery,
though he cannot escape himself.

All this, however, was tame; but the winding up of the spectacle in a
quiet natural way. It would soon have been over now, and the sightseers
scattered off to their homes; but just as they were beginning to retire,
a new incident claimed their attention. A scene almost as exciting as
any that had preceded, though only a single personage appeared in it.
This Dominguez, the gaoler, who had been absent all the while at his
_pulqueria_, and only just warned of the event that had so convulsed the
Calle de Plateros, breaking through the crowd like an enraged bull,
rushed along the sewer's edge, nourishing his whip over the heads of the
_forzados_, at the same time reviling the sentries for their scandalous
neglect of duty! To tell the truth, he was more troubled about his own.
He had received particular instructions to be watchful of four
prisoners--the very ones that had escaped. Well might he dread the
reckoning in store for him on return to the gaol. However could he face
his governor?

For some time he strode to and fro, venting his dru