Rafael was too warm and weary for extra walking and he waited for the riding party to come up, but when it came, though Grandfather, singing softly to himself, and Tia Marta, in the act of repelling Pedrillo’s humble efforts to ease her seat with the offering of a cinnamon pillow, were there, he saw no Pilarica. Don Quixote, with empty saddle, was plodding along demurely a few rods behind the rest, but when asked what had become of his little mistress, he twitched his white ears with the most non-committal air in the world. XV THE EVE OF ST. JOHN While the caravan halted, all in consternation over the loss of Pilarica, that glad-hearted little maiden was, as ever, on the best of terms with life. To be sure, the nooning had not been quite as pleasant as usual. Though the morning route had led past fields softly golden with the early summer harvest, where reapers in wide hats were wielding shining sickles, the travellers had found themselves by midday on a parched upland, neither shade nor water to be had. After their frugal luncheon of bread and cheese, flavored with onions for the muleteers and with figs for the children, everybody but Pilarica had gone to sleep in such scanty shelter from the sun as the pack-mules afforded. Pilarica had loyally stayed by Don Quixote, who, though his sides were now well rounded out, cast hardly a larger scrap of shadow than the birds of prey hovering in the burning blue, so that the child, too hot to fall asleep, had taken her doll and strolled a little away from the train. Suddenly she saw stretched out at her feet a shabby cloak, propped up a trifle by dry stalks and broken bits of brush, the brown of the cloak so like the brown of the earth that it would hardly be noticed three yards off. Under this homely tent was--of all wonders!--a baby, a really truly baby wrapped in a little white kid-skin, a baby who blinked his black eyes and gurgled drowsily as Pilarica and her doll cuddled down beside him. And there they all three slept so soundly that the bustle attendant on getting the train under way did not rouse them, while Grandfather, supposing that Pilarica was riding with her uncle on Coronela or had been tossed up by one of the muleteers to a pack-throne, himself untied the rope that bound Don Quixote’s forelegs together and chirruped to the donkey to follow Carbonera. When Pilarica, so exhausted by the heat that her siesta lasted twice as long as usual, finally awoke, a strange, wild-looking figure was squatted close by,--a figure so tanned from the mat of shaggy hair to the naked arms and legs that it looked as if it were only a queer shape of the sunburnt soil. Pilarica, fearlessly creeping out from under the cloak and sitting upright, saw at some distance beyond this unkempt watcher a flock of goats.