"Alas!" said the Moor, faintly, "I have neither
home nor habitation, I am a stranger in the land. Suffer me to lay
my head this night beneath thy roof, and thou shalt be amply repaid."
Honest Peregil thus saw himself unexpectedly saddled with an infidel
guest, but he was too humane to refuse a night's shelter to a fellow
being in so forlorn a plight, so he conducted the Moor to his
dwelling. The children, who had sallied forth open-mouthed as usual on
hearing the tramp of the donkey, ran back with affright, when they
beheld the turbaned stranger, and hid themselves behind their
mother. The latter stepped forth intrepidly, like a ruffling hen
before her brood when a vagrant dog approaches.
"What infidel companion," cried she, "is this you have brought
home at this late hour, to draw upon us the eyes of the Inquisition?"
"Be quiet, wife," replied the Gallego, "here is a poor sick
stranger, without friend or home; wouldst thou turn him forth to
perish in the streets?"
The wife would still have remonstrated, for although she lived in
a hovel she was a furious stickler for the credit of her house; the
little water-carrier, however, for once was stiff-necked, and
refused to bend beneath the yoke. He assisted the poor Moslem to
alight, and spread a mat and a sheep-skin for him, on the ground, in
the coolest part of the house; being the only kind of bed that his
poverty afforded.
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