three o'clock
The postal service of Spain is still almost mediæval . In the principal cities the post-offices are to-day only opened for business during two hours of the twenty-four . In the year of the Franco-Prussian war there was no postal service at all to the disaffected parts of the northern provinces . At the end of a week , Marcos rose at three o'clock and rode sixty miles before sunset to keep his word with Juanita . He did not trust the railway , which indeed was in constant danger of being cut by Carlist or Royalist , but performed the distance by road where he met many friends from Navarre and one or two from the valley of the Wolf . A thousand reports , a hundred rumours and lies innumerable , were on the roads also , traveling hither and thither over Spain . And Marshall Prim seemed to be the favoured god of the moment .