“Give the young gentleman his wine and his porridge,” said she, “and, master, I myself will bear his charges.” “You, good wench!” I asked incredulously, for she was so ragged that she looked in worse case than myself. “Yes, young gentleman, I can pay,” she answered proudly. “I make it a practice to save a hundred maravedis of my wages a year.” “Very well then, Casilda,” said the innkeeper. “Fetch me fifty of your maravedis, and you may bring this young rogue his breakfast. But you are a little fool, I say, for he is but a travelling cheat who will never repay you.” No sooner had her master spoken thus to my disparagement than the kindly creature, who was really very handsome if you will believe me, reader, stood up most majestically upon all her few inches, and said like a little queen,-- “Shame upon you, master! He is no cheat, but a very gentleman, with the sweetest face and an honest and kind expression, just like Victor, our old mule. I would trust him to the utmost of my wages; and if I do not see my money again, I shall know that fortune has used him ill.” It touched me to the soul to hear this rude and tattered little creature speak up for me like this--for me, a beggar, without a friend in the whole of the world. There was no reason, except that furnished by a kind heart, why she should confide her savings to one unknown to her, one from whom all things were averse. While I ate my breakfast with not so good a relish as I had expected, I could not but meditate upon so much goodness proceeding out of a low condition, and, further, upon the humiliation of my state. I had not got through with this food for the mind when the Englishman entered, and in great sickness of the spirit I asked him how far it was to Toledo. “An hundred leagues or so,” he said lightly, as though such a journey was no great affair. I felt my heart sink. My beggary began to oppress me like a distemper, for how was I to win such a distant place without so much as a piece of silver in my coat? Wherefore, with many misgivings and with deep discomfiture, I laid my case before him. And I asked counsel of him, for in spite of his mad humours, for which his nation was to blame, he was a man of birth, a man of excellent native shrewdness, and he knew the world. When I told him of my pass, he blinked his eyes a good deal, rubbed his chin, and held his jaw in his hand with an air of deep perplexity. “This is a devil of a matter,” he said very gravely. “You would not suppose, Master Miguel, that this purse of yours took to itself a pair of legs, walked out of your pocket, and started out into the desert to admire the scenery?” “I fail to see how it could do so.” “I share your opinion, good Don; therefore I adjudge the landlord, who is a scurvy fellow, to have picked it out of your pocket as you lay asleep.” “Ah no,” said I; “the unhappy man is sorely afflicted at the loss. I cannot pay my score, and he has accused me of not having had the money at all.”