No one saw the Moor
enter our dwelling, and no one will know any thing of his death."
So said, so done. The wife aided him; they rolled the body of the
unfortunate Moslem in the mat on which he had expired, laid it
across the ass, and Peregil set out with it for the banks of the
river.
As ill luck would have it, there lived opposite to the water-carrier
a barber named Pedrillo Pedrugo, one of the most prying, tattling, and
mischief-making of his gossip tribe. He was a weasel-faced,
spider-legged varlet, supple and insinuating; the famous barber of
Seville could not surpass him for his universal knowledge of the
affairs of others, and he had no more power of retention than a sieve.
It was said that he slept but with one eye at a time, and kept one ear
uncovered, so that, even in his sleep, he might see and hear all
that was going on. Certain it is, he was a sort of scandalous
chronicle for the quid-nuncs of Granada, and had more customers than
all the rest of his fraternity.
This meddlesome barber heard Peregil arrive at an unusual hour at
night, and the exclamations of his wife and children. His head was
instantly popped out of a little window which served him as a
look-out, and he saw his neighbor assist a man in Moorish garb into
his dwelling. This was so strange an occurrence, that Pedrillo Pedrugo
slept not a wink that night. Every five minutes he was at his
loophole, watching the lights that gleamed through the chinks of his
neighbor's door, and before daylight he beheld Peregil sally forth
with his donkey unusually laden.
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