should be in receipt of a scholarship or of a civil list pension.

We were too dazed by the drug of twenty hours of tedium and sleeplessness to suck any adventure from the passage through the French Customs House at Hendaye. But this experience roused us so that we were quite mentally awake by the time that we reached Irun. Here a problem confronted us.

We had in our large leather trunk a good many yards of government canvas, several pounds' worth of paints, and ten pounds in weight of preparation for turning the government canvas into material for painting upon. We had heard that the Spanish customs were very strict; very strict in theory, that is.

"But if they worry you, bribe them a bit," had said a friend. Were these things contraband? If so, how much was one to bribe, and how was one to do it? There are plenty of men with nerve enough to try to tip Charon for his trip over the Styx, but Jan is not one of these.

Now for a man of Jan's kind to attempt a delicate piece of palmed bribing often results in things worse than if he had left well alone. Ten to one there is a fumble and the coin drops to the floor beneath the nose of the chief bug-a-bug. So, fingering two unpleasantly warm five-peseta pieces in his pocket, he prayed fervently to kind Opportunity to step in.

To his prayer the goddess answered. We had brought with us from our Paris studio a mosquito curtain which once before had been used in Majorca. As our baggage was packed in London we had, rather than undo straps and locks, tied this mosquito curtain, wrapped in clean brown paper, on to the outside of our suit-case. Upon this the authorities flung themselves.

"Hi!" they cried. "You will pay duty on this, it is new."

Two gendarmes and a clerk tore off the paper, pitched the mosquito curtain into a pair of scales, weighed it and wrote out the bill. All the while we had been clamouring, with a sudden memory from Hugo: "Antigua, antigua, antigua...."

This clamour became suddenly effective as soon as the officials had nothing to do than to collect the money. Instead of cash we gave them a chorus of "Antigua, antigua." The clerk and the two gendarmes then began what seemed to be an impromptu imitation of Miss Loie Fuller in her celebrated skirt dancing—mosquito curtain whirled this way and that in voluptuous curves. They were looking for evidence. Suddenly I pointed out a spot where perchance some full-blooded mosquito had come to a sudden death in 1913, when the world was yet at peace. The mosquito curtain was refolded, the bill torn up. They were quite peremptory with the rest of our luggage; so Jan dropped the two warm five-peseta pieces back into his pocket.

However much one may be in a country, one never feels that one is in the country until the door leading out of the customs house has been passed. So we never really thought of ourselves as being in Spain until we stepped on to the platform where the train for Madrid was standing. With a bitter shock, we realized that it was a chill day and raining. We had come all the way from England, hunting the sun, to be greeted in June by a day which would fit, both in temperature and atmosphere, the tail-end of a March at home.