Passing a hamlet a short distance from Robleda we saw a number of Spaniards, women as well as men, outside the door of a good-looking house; much altercation was apparently taking place; at length a soldier (named Ody Brophy) rushed out with half a flitch of bacon under his arm; a scuffle ensued, and Lieutenant D‘Arcy, to whose company the soldier belonged, ran up to inquire the cause of the outcry, but it was soon too manifest to be misunderstood; the war-whoop was raised against our man, who, on his part, as stoutly defended himself, not by words alone but by blows, which had nearly silenced his opponents, when he was seized by my friend D‘Arcy. _Piccaroon_, _Ladrone_, and other opprobrious epithets were poured with much volubility against him, but he, with the greatest _sang froid_, turned to his officer and said, “Be aisy now, and don’t be vexing yourself with them or the likes of them. Wasn’t it for you I was making a bargain? and didn’t I offer the value of it? Don’t I see the way you’re lost with the hunger, and the divil a bit iv rations you’ll get ate to-night. Och! you cratur, iv your poor mother, that’s dead! was to see you after such a condition, it’s she that id be leev’d iv herself for letting you away from her at-all-at-all.”—“Well,” said D‘Arcy (softened, no doubt, and who would not at such a speech?), “what did you offer for it?”—“What did I offer for it, is it? Fait, then, I offered enough, but they made such a noise that I don’t think they heard me, for, upon my sowl, I hardly heard myself with the uproar they made; and sure I told them iv I hadn’t money enough to pay for it (and it was true for me I hadn’t, unless I got it dog cheap!) you had; but they don’t like a bone in my skin, or in yours either, and that is the raison they are afther offinding me afther such a manner. And didn’t one of the women get my left thumb into her mouth, and grunch it like a bit of mate? Look at it,” said he in conclusion, at the same time thrusting his bleeding hand nearly into D‘Arcy’s face, “fait and iv your honour hadn’t come up, it’s my belief she would have bit it clane off at the knuckle.” This speech, delivered with a rapidity and force that was sufficient to overwhelm the most practised rhetorician, carried away everything along with it, like chaff before a whirlwind, and D‘Arcy made all matters smooth by paying the price demanded (two dollars), and the piece of bacon was carried away by Ody, who was a townsman of D‘Arcy’s, and who repeatedly assured him “he would do more than that to sarve him.”