The thoroughness of his proceedings might be gathered from the choice he made of his agents. One of the most useful was an idiot boy, whose weak-mindedness was relieved by some glimmerings of sense and who passed entirely unsuspected by those upon whom he spied. His foolish talk and silly ways gained him ready admission into cafés and clubs, where he was laughed at and treated as a butt upon whom food, drink and unlimited cigars were generously bestowed. He had the gift of remaining wide awake while seeming to be sound asleep, his ears ever on the stretch to pick up compromising facts which were openly mentioned before him. He had also a prodigious memory and seldom forgot what he heard, storing up everything to be produced later when he attended upon the governor. In this way Zugasti often heard of crimes almost as soon as they were planned, and could hunt up their perpetrators without delay. On one occasion a mysterious crime was unravelled by placing the idiot in the same cell with two of the suspected actors, who entirely believed in the imbecility of their cell companion and unguardedly revealed the true inwardness of the whole affair. The _ladron en grande_, the "robber chief" at the head of a numerous band, is still to be met with, although rarely representing the type of the famous José Maria. These leaders rose to the command of their lawless fellows by force of superior will, and they were unhesitatingly obeyed and followed with reckless devotion in the constant commission of crime. One or two noted specimens have survived till to-day and some account of them may be extracted from recent records. Vizco el Borje was long a terror to the peaceable people in northern Andalusia. He was originally an officer of _carabineros_, the "custom house" regiment of Spain, but had been, in his own judgment, unjustly dismissed and found himself deprived of the means of subsistence. Falling lower and lower, step by step he became an outcast, an Ishmaelite consumed with an intense hatred of all social arrangements, with his hand against every man. He began business as a smuggler and soon took to worse, following the Spanish proverb:-- "De contrabandista e ladron No haymas que un escalon." "There is only one short step from smuggler to thief," and Vizco quickly crossed the narrow space and became a notorious criminal. He carried on the war against law and order with constantly increasing recklessness and more and more daring outrages. His strong personal character, his iron will, his unbounded courage and boldness gave him a great ascendancy over the men who collected around him and who served him with the greatest loyalty and unstinting effort. One of his exploits may be quoted at some length as exhibiting his methods and the success that generally attended them.