“O Jesu!” said the English giant, laughing into his hands softly, “I can feel this accursed fluxion mounting into my mind. I can see perfectly well, Master Miguel, if we go our ways together about this peninsula of yours, I shall be compelled to travel with a physician. Not afeared to draw your sword! Why, good Don, your sword is a lath, and he who draws it has not a hair to his chin, and cannot bleat so loud as a Barbary sheep.” “Deride me if you will, Sir Richard, but I will draw my sword for this grandee. Fortune has decreed it. And tell me, in addition to these misfortunes of his, hath he a daughter of a most surpassing fairness?” “You can certainly count on his having a daughter. Dukes all the world over are notorious getters of wenches.” I asked the Englishman the reason of this phenomenon. “It is a singular quality of their blood,” he declared. “It loses its ambition and fills the world with farthingales.” “Indeed,” said I, “is that the case? But it doth truly appear that this virtuous Duke of Montesina was designed by Heaven that I might fulfil my father’s behests. To-morrow, come what may, I will adventure towards his country; and as you would have me believe that he hath a daughter, I must hasten to appear before her.” “A pitiless old hag of sixty, I dare swear,” cried Sir Richard Pendragon. “There will not be a tooth in her mouth. But now you have put me in mind of this duke, young sirrah, I think I will adventure thither myself. For, upon my life, I have a crow to pluck with this King John of Castile. I mind me it is high time I put paid to a score I owe him.” “Wherefore, Sir Richard?” “Wherefore, my son? ’Tis but a year ago he threw the last of the Pendragons into a dungeon; and had it not been for the ready contrivance of that meritorious mind in scraping a hole through the wall with a nail out of his shoe, he would have ceased to drink sack this twelvemonth. Yes, Spaniardo, it was a most villainous matter, and it is certainly time I put it in order.” “If I may ride with you, sir, I shall count it a proud day,” said I, making a low bow; for this strange man, with all his quiddity, was one whose company was to be esteemed in an early adventure into the world. “You shall, good Don,” said he, smiling upon me with much civility. “And now let us draw our cloaks about us and creep into the chimney-place, and sleep the sleep of those who addict themselves to virtue. You take one corner and I will take the other; and let us pray that we sleep like doom, for I tell you, brother, it is a long and hard journey to Toledo.”