It was at the beginning of this reign of terrorism, and the morning after the ball at Señora Tertulia’s, that our friend Tom Thorne awoke in a room by no means so snug, airy, or odorous as his own well-appointed bed-chamber in the Calle Derecho. Close beside, him, busily engaged in brushing his clothes with his hands, and alternately muttering maledictions against sanguinary Spaniards, and mumbling over odds and ends of old songs, was a strong-built ruddy-looking gentleman of about twenty-eight or thirty. “Holla, Griffin!” cried Tom, “where the deuce is this, and how came you here?” “Faith, Mr Thorne. I came here for much the same reason as you did; and, though not in a very creditable place, I can thank my stars I’m in good company any how.” “But how came we here, Griffin?” “Faith, Thorne, except your nerves are very steady--and in virtue of Señora Tertulia’s champagne, mine are not--I think it might be as well to defer that same story until you have shaved, or you may run the risk of having some of the cuts in your face which were intended for your throat last night. You see, sir, I left La Señora’s about the same time you did. They say the cool air is refreshing, but I never found it so after drinking champagne. Well, as I was stumbling along, I fell over a body, stretched across the pavement. ‘You have taken mighty convenient quarters for a cold night,’ thought I, ‘bad luck to you;’ and, intending to do him a good turn, as I might require it myself soon, I was trying to raise him up, when two men, who were standing in the shadow of a door-way, within a few feet of me, cried, ‘Hist, hist, passa adelante, amigo.’ ‘Come and help me with this poor devil here,’ said I. ‘Pass a-head, friend, if you do not wish the same accommodation,’ said they, throwing the light of a dark lantern suddenly, and only for a moment, on the object of my attention. I required no second bidding, Thorne. The pavement was soft and warm enough for a corpse! My first thought was for a pistol or a stick, but I had neither. I looked at the men,--there they stood as cool and careless as the door-posts, and me fixed and staring at them as if they had been Gog and Magog. ‘Passa adelante,’ growled out one of them, drawing a knife, at the same time. This brought me to my senses, and I passed on--and, mark me, Thorne, as sober as a judge.