With all his bad qualities, José had some of a redeeming character. Among these were his kindness to his female prisoners, his generosity to the poor, and his forbearance, for he frequently restrained his troop from acts of violence, and displayed on occasions a certain chivalrous nobility of character, hardly to be expected from a robber. In person he was very small, scarcely more than five feet in height, with bowed legs; but he was stout, strong and active and made amends in boldness, determination and talent for his physical deficiencies. His success and the long continued control which he exercised over the lawless fellows who composed his band proved that he possessed the difficult art of command. His courage indeed was proverbial. As an instance of it, it is reported that he once ventured into the presence of the Prime Minister at Madrid and dared to beard him in his own house. Brigandage has not wholly disappeared in Spain although it no longer exists on the grand scale of former days when the mountain passes and lesser highways were infested by robber bands led by daring and unscrupulous chiefs who stopped travellers, blackmailed landed proprietors and carried off country folk whom they held to ransom often for considerable sums. To-day, if the knights of the road are still to be met with occasionally, they are for the most part paltry pilferers bent on stealing small sums from the poorer folk returning from market, or in rare cases holding up some solitary vehicle and its defenceless passengers. These are of the type of the old fashioned _salteadores_ or "jumpers," so named because they jumped out from behind a rock and dropped suddenly on their prey with the old peremptory summons of "_Boca abajo!_" "_Boca à tierra!_" "Faces down! Mouth to the ground!" The cry may still be heard, and it means mischief when backed as of old by the muzzle of a gun protruding from the bushes in some narrow pass or defile. They are courageous too, these Spanish road agents, ready to fight at need as well as to rob, to overbear resistance and to meet the officers of the law with their own weapons. A story is told of one daring ruffian, Rullo de Zancayro, who, in 1859, murdered the alcalde of his village and was followed by two _guardias civiles_. At the end of a long chase they went too near some brushwood, when one was shot dead and the fugitive made good his escape.