Thus with an easy heart Frederick Conyngham set out on his journey, having for companion one as irresponsible as himself. He had determined to go to Xeres, though that town of ill repute lay far to the westward of his road towards the capital. It would have been simple enough to destroy the letter entrusted to him by Julia Barenna, a stranger whom he was likely never to see again—simple enough and infinitely safer as he suspected, for the billet-doux of Mr. Larralde smelt of grimmer things than love. But Julia Barenna wittingly, or in all innocence, appealed to that sense of chivalry which is essentially the quality of lonely men who have never had sisters, and Conyngham was ready to help Julia where he would have refused his assistance to a man, however hard pressed. ‘Cannot leave the girl in a hole,’ he said to himself, and proceeded to act upon this resolution with a steadiness of purpose for which some may blame him. It was evening when the two travellers reached Xeres after some weary hours of monotonous progress through the vine-clad plains of this country. ‘It is no wonder,’ said Concepçion, ‘that the men of Xeres are malcontents, when they live in a country as flat as the palm of my hand.’ It happened to be a fête day, which in Spain, as in other countries farther North, is synonymous with mischief. The men of Xeres had taken advantage of this holiday to demonstrate their desire for more. They had marched through the streets with banner and song, arrayed in their best clothes, fostering their worst thoughts. They had consumed marvellous quantities of that small Amontillado which is as it were a thin fire to the blood, heating and degenerating at once. They had talked much nonsense and listened to more. Carlist or Christino—it was all the same to them, so long as they had a change of some sort. In the meantime they had a desire to break something, if only to assert their liberty. A few minutes before Conyngham and his guide rode into the market-place, which in Xeres is as long as a street, some of the free sons of Spain had thought fit to shout insulting remarks to a passer-by. With a fire too bright for his years this old gentleman, with fierce white moustache and imperial, had turned on them, calling them good-for-nothings and sons of pigs. Conyngham rode up just in time to see the ruffians rise as one man and rush at the victim of their humour. The old man with his back to the wall repelled his assailants with a sort of fierce joy in his attitude which betokened the soldier.