As he stood in the street the dust arose in whirling columns and enveloped all who were abroad; for a gale was howling across the tableland, which the Moors of old had named ‘Majerit’—a draught of wind. The conductor, who, like a good and jovial conductor, had never refused an offer of refreshment on the road, was now muddled with drink and the heat of the sun. He was, in fact, engaged in a warm controversy with a passenger. So the Padre found his own humble portmanteau, a thing of cardboard and canvas, and trudged up the Calle de Toledo, bearing the bag in one hand and his cloak in the other—a lean figure in the sunlight. Father Concha had been in Madrid before, though he rarely boasted of it, or indeed of any of his travels. ‘The wise man does not hang his knowledge on a hook,’ he was in the habit of saying. That this knowledge was of that useful description which is usually designated as knowing one’s way about, soon became apparent; for the dusty traveller passed with unerring steps through the narrower streets that lie between the Calle de Toledo and the street of Segovia. Here dwell the humbler citizens of Madrid, persons engaged in the small commerce of the market-place, for in the Plazuela de la Cebada a hundred yards away is held the corn market, which, indeed, renders the dust in this quarter particularly trying to the eyes. Once or twice the priest was forced to stop at the corner of two streets and there do battle with the wind. ‘But it is a hurricane,’ he muttered; ‘a hurricane.’ With one hand he held his hat, with the other clung to his cloak and portmanteau. ‘But it will blow the dust from my poor old capa,’ he added, giving the cloak an additional shake. He presently found himself in a street which, if narrower than its neighbours, smelt less pestiferous. The open drain that ran down the middle of it pursued its varied course with a quite respectable speed. In the middle of the street Father Concha paused and looked up, nodding as if to an old friend at the sight of a dingy piece of palm bound to the ironwork of a balcony on the second floor. ‘The time to wash off the dust,’ he muttered as he climbed the narrow stairs, ‘and then to work.’ An hour later he was afoot again in a quarter of the city which was less known to him—namely, in the Calle Preciados, where he sought a venta more or less suspected by the police. The wind had risen, and was now blowing with the force of a hurricane. It came from the north-west with a chill whistle which bespoke its birthplace among the peaks of the Gaudarramas. The streets were deserted; the oil lamps swung on their chains at the street corners, casting weird shadows that swept over the face of the houses with uncanny irregularity. It was an evening for evil deeds, except that when Nature is in an ill-humour human nature is mostly cowed, and those who have bad consciences cannot rid their minds of thoughts of the hereafter.