The Count of Nullepart and myself being of this mind also, our companion left to us the task of appeasing those who had thus been ravished of their wares. Yet even to us he addressed a remonstrance. “Is it good silver money you are giving these poor souls?” he said. “I dare say it is the continental custom, but it marks an essential difference between the nations of the earth. We quick-moving islanders are more peremptory. You continentals ask a ‘by your leave,’ and live by the power of the purse; we English all the world over claim our own where we find it.” In this, at least, I think Sir Richard Pendragon must have had a just appreciation of his countrymen. For all the long leagues we rode with him upon our embassy it was never once our hap to find him with his hand within his poke. When we had come out of Toledo, and had got fairly upon the narrow winding tracks which traversed the great wilderness that was spread before us, Sir Richard Pendragon began to show a great concern for robbers. His eyes were continually casting about the horizon. No bush, no rock, no tree escaped his dark suspicion; his hand was upon the hilt of his sword a hundred times a day. At every turn of the road he expected to see a robber; and, indeed, as the day wore on without any sort of an encounter, it seemed to be a grief to him that robbers were so few. But if we came upon any chance wayfarers, to judge by the haste which they made to get clear of our path, I should say that this opinion was not general. “By my soul,” said Sir Richard Pendragon, as three honest, grey-bearded merchants upon comely asses scurried away up a steep mountain path, “these Spaniardoes are the poorest spirited people upon the face of the earth. If I had not had a good mother, and she had not had a good son, I might have unloaded those fish-blooded burgesses so easily as I drink sherris.” Whereupon Sir Richard Pendragon sighed profoundly. We made many leagues that first day of our journey, although we rested at noon in a small hamlet from the heat of the sun. It may have been that we had entered upon our adventure not too propitiously, and that the humours of the Englishman made but an odd sort of companionship--notwithstanding a liberal rebate for the qualities of kings’ blood--for one who boasted the sangre azul of a true hidalgo; yet the wisdom and politeness of the humane and ever-delightful Count of Nullepart kept us all three to the road, and brought us in a state of toleration one of another to a wayside venta at the end of the long day.