ds as with the pack you gave me, Shorsha, I had yet contrived to win
money from the priests and soldiers of the Faith. Finding myself
possessed of such a capital, I determined to leave the service, and to
make the best of my way to Ireland; so I deserted, but coming in an evil
hour to a place they calls Torre Lodones, I found the priest playing at
cards with his parishioners. The sight of the cards made me stop, and
then, fool like, notwithstanding the treasure I had about me, I must wish
to play, so not being able to speak their language, I made signs to them
to let me play, and the priest and his thaives consented willingly; so I
sat down to cards with the priest and two of his parishioners, and in a
little time had won plenty of their money, but I had better never have
done any such thing, for suddenly the priest and all his parishioners set
upon me and bate me, and took from me all I had, and cast me out of the
village more dead than alive. Och! it's a bad village that, and if I had
known what it was I would have avoided it, or run straight through it,
though I saw all the card-playing in the world going on in it. There is
a proverb about it, as I was afterwards told, old as the time of the
Moors, which holds good to the present day--it is, that in Torre Lodones
there are twenty-four housekeepers, and twenty-five thieves, maning that
all the people are thaives, and the clergyman to boot, who is not
reckoned a housekeeper; and troth I found the clergyman the greatest
thaif of the lot. After being cast out of that village I travelled for
nearly a month, subsisting by begging tolerably well, for though most of
the Spanish are thaives, they are rather charitable; but though
charitable thaives they do not like their own being taken from them
without leave being asked, as I found to my cost; for on my entering a
garden near Seville, without leave, to take an orange, the labourer came
running up and struck me to the ground with a hatchet, giving me a big
wound in the arm. I fainted with loss of blood, and on reviving I found
myself in a hospital at Seville, to which the labourer and the people of
the village had taken me. I should have died of starvation in that
hospital had not some English people heard of me and come to see me; they
tended me with food till I was cured, and then paid my passage on board a
ship to London, to which place the ship carried me.

"And now I was in London with five shillings in my pocket--