Word had at once been taken in to the Captain-General that we were awaiting his pleasure. Presently an aide appeared and bowed to Malgares. This left Pike and me seated alone on a stone bench, under the eyes of the guard and of a rabble of house and stable servants, who had pressed in to gape at those strange creatures, _los Anglo-Americanos_. It was no easy test for my temper to bear, nor, I judge, for Pike's. Added to this, we were by now fairly on needles and pins as to the manner in which this despotic ruler should choose to receive us. Lieutenant Medina had withdrawn. In his place appeared a ferret-eyed little Frenchman, who snuffled complaints of how he had been abused in this vile land, and sought to draw from us expressions of opinion regarding the Spanish Government. Suspecting him to be a spy, Pike pointed to the outer door, and gave him his _conge_ in Spanish: "_Vaya, carrejo!_" The scoundrel went, followed by a muffled yet none the less hearty laugh over his discomfiture from the rough, honest soldiers. After a time Medina returned with a sandy, pale-eyed but well-built young officer whom he introduced as Alferez Don Juan Pedro Walker. The newcomer hastened to explain, in English, that he was the same John Peter Walker of New Orleans who in 1798 aided Mr. Ellicott in surveying the Florida line. At this moment Malgares appeared in the doorway of the audience chamber, and requested Pike to enter. I started to follow, but he waved me back, with an anxious frown. This boded ill for us. To conceal my concern, I expressed to Walker my surprise that an American should have entered the service of Spain. He answered quickly that he was not my countryman, since his father was English and his mother French, and he had been born and reared in New Orleans under Spanish rule. While he was explaining this, in rather an apologetic tone, Medina was called away. There followed a summons to Walker to attend upon the Governor-General, and I found myself left quite alone in the midst of the gaping, muttering rabble. This was no throng of simple, hospitable rustics such as I had met and liked in the North Province; but a stable and kitchen mob, the low scullions and hostlers and lackeys of a great man, puffed with reflected pride and saucy with second-hand arrogance. Soon I began to overhear jeers and scurrilous flings, of which the word "spy" was the least galling. Before long all my apprehensions as to the Governor-General were drowned in the swelling tide of my indignation and anger. It was unendurable to sit for what seemed an endless time before the insolent leers and coarse raillery of this scum. The soldiers looked on, without attempting either to join in their scoffs or to silence them.