“My _ro_ is prisoner at the village yonder,” said the woman, pointing with her hand in a particular direction; “he is prisoner yonder for _choring a mailla_. {133b} We are come to see what we can do in his behalf; and where can we lodge better than in this forest, where there is nothing to pay? It is not the first time, I trow, that _Caloré_ have slept at the root of a tree.” One of the striplings now gave us barley for our animals in a large bag, into which we successively introduced their heads, allowing the famished creatures to regale themselves till we conceived that they had satisfied their hunger. There was a _puchero_ simmering at the fire, half full of bacon, _garbanzos_, and other provisions; this was emptied into a large wooden platter, and out of this Antonio and myself supped. The other gypsies refused to join us, giving us to understand that they had eaten before our arrival; they all, however, did justice to the leathern bottle of Antonio, which, before his departure from Merida, he had the precaution to fill. I was by this time completely overcome with fatigue and sleep. Antonio flung me an immense horse-cloth, of which he bore more than one beneath the huge cushion on which he rode; in this I wrapped myself, and placing my head upon a bundle, and my feet as near as possible to the fire, I lay down. Antonio and the other gypsies remained seated by the fire conversing. I listened for a moment to what they said, but I did not perfectly understand it, and what I did understand by no means interested me. The rain still drizzled, but I heeded it not, and was soon asleep.