phistophelean affectation which is fairly imposing, perhaps because
the scenery admits of a larger swagger than Piccadilly, perhaps because
of a certain sentimentality in the man which gives him that touch of
grace which alone can excuse deliberate picturesqueness. His eyes and
mouth are by no means rascally; he has a fine voice and a ready wit; and
whether he is really the strongest man in the party, or not, he looks
it. He is certainly, the best fed, the best dressed, and the best
trained. The fact that he speaks English is not unexpected in spite of
the Spanish landscape; for with the exception of one man who might be
guessed as a bullfighter ruined by drink and one unmistakable Frenchman,
they are all cockney or American; therefore, in a land of cloaks and
sombreros, they mostly wear seedy overcoats, woollen mufflers, hard
hemispherical hats, and dirty brown gloves. Only a very few dress after
their leader, whose broad sombrero with a cock's feather in the band,
and voluminous cloak descending to his high boots, are as un-English as
possible. None of them are armed; and the ungloved ones keep their hands
in their pockets because it is their national belief that it must be
dangerously cold in the open air with the night coming on. (It is as
warm an evening as any reasonable man could desire).

Except the bullfighting inebriate there is only one person in the
company who looks more than, say, thirty-three. He is a small man with
reddish whiskers, weak eyes, and the anxious look of a small tradesman
in difficulties. He wears the only tall hat visible: it shines in the
sunset with the sticky glow of some sixpenny patent hat reviver, often
applied and constantly tending to produce a worse state of the original
surface than the ruin it was applied to remedy. He has a collar and cuff
of celluloid; and his brown Chesterfield overcoat, with velvet collar,
is still presentable. He is pre-eminently the respectable man of the
party, and is certainly over forty, possibly over fifty. He is the
corner man on the leader's right, opposite three men in scarlet ties on
his left. One of these three is the Frenchman. Of the remaining two, who
are both English, one is argumentative, solemn, and obstinate; the other
rowdy and mischievous.

The chief, with a magnificent fling of the end of his cloak across his
left shoulder, rises to address them. The applause which greets him
shows that he is a favorite orator.

THE CHIEF. Friends and f