Then the Alcalde called to a man among the bystanders looking in, who held the office of the town's crier sometimes, and sometimes that of executioner when needful, and said, "Gil Berrueco, go and fetch me here the first two asses you can catch; for by the life of our lord the king, I will make these two captive gentlemen ride through the streets, who have taken the liberty of usurping the alms of the charitable, which belong of right to the real poor, and telling lies and inventions, whilst they are all the time as whole and sound as an apple, and more able and fit to use their spades than to be flourishing whips senselessly in the air. I was a slave in Algiers five years, and I know that they have said no one thing to show they ever were there." "Body o' me!" cried the captive; "is it possible that my lord Alcalde can expect that poor as we are in worldly gifts, we should be so rich in those of memory, and that for a folly not worth three farthings, he will put to shame two such insignificant students as ourselves, and deprive his majesty of two brave soldiers on their way to Italy and Flanders to rout and destroy, and wound and kill, all the enemies of our holy Catholic faith that we may encounter. For if we must needs tell the truth, who is of heavenly birth, my lord Alcalde must know that we are no captives, but students from Salamanca, who, in the midst of our studies, felt a desire to see the world, and to know a little of the life of a soldier, as we were acquainted sufficiently with a peaceful life. To carry our scheme the better into effect, we happened to light upon a party of captives, who might be true, or false, like ourselves; I cannot say if they were or not. From them we bought the canvass and picture, and obtained information respecting Algiers, and such things as seemed necessary to us to render our fraud credible. We sold our books and our furniture at a low price, and laden with this apparatus, have travelled thus far, and we think of going on, if your worship does not forbid it." "What I am thinking of doing," said the Alcalde, "is to give each of you a hundred lashes, and in lieu of the pike you talk of wielding in Flanders, put an oar into your hands to work with at the galleys, with which you may perhaps be as serviceable to his majesty as you would be with the pike." "I could wish," rejoined the young man, who had been the principal speaker, "that my lord Alcalde was an Athenian legislator, and that the severity of his office reached the ears of the other lords of the council, where, obtaining credit from them, they would hold him as a severe and rigid judge, and commit to him matters of importance, wherein he might show his severity and his justice. But my lord Alcalde knows that 'Summum jus summa injuria.'"