main, roaring out that he was drowning. His
wife and his neighbours ran to him with lights, and found him striking
out lustily with his legs and arms. "Help! help!" he cried; "I am
suffocating;" and he really was not far from it, such was the effect of
his excessive fright. They seized and rescued him from his deadly peril.
When he had recovered a little, he told them the trick the gipsy woman
had played him; and yet for all that, he dug a hole, more than a fathom
deep, in the place pointed out to him, in spite of all his neighbours
could say; and had he not been forcibly prevented by one of them, when
he was beginning to undermine the foundations of the house, he would
have brought the whole of it down about his ears. The story spread all
over the city; so that the little boys in the streets used to point
their fingers at him, and shout in his ears the story of the gipsy's
trick, and his own credulity. Such was the tale told by the old gitana,
in explanation of her unwillingness to go to Seville.

The gipsies, knowing from Andrew that the youth had a sum of money
about him, readily assented to his accompanying them, and promised to
guard and conceal him as long as he pleased. They determined to make a
bend to the left, and enter La Mancha and the kingdom of Murcia. The
youth thanked them cordially, and gave them on the spot a hundred gold
crowns to divide amongst them, whereupon they became as pliant as washed
leather. Preciosa, however, was not pleased with the continuance among
them of Don Sancho, for that was the youth's name, but the gipsies
changed it to Clement. Andrew too was rather annoyed at this
arrangement; for it seemed to him that Clement had given up his original
intention upon very slight grounds; but the latter, as if he read his
thoughts, told him that he was glad to go to Murcia, because it was near
Carthagena, whence, if galleys arrived there, as he expected, he could
easily pass over to Italy. Finally, in order to have him more under his
own eye, to watch his acts, and scrutinise his thoughts, Andrew desired
to have Clement for his own comrade, and the latter accepted this
friendly offer as a signal favour. They were always together, both spent
largely, their crowns came down like rain; they ran, leaped, danced, and
pitched the bar better than any of their companions, and were more than
commonly liked by the women of the tribe, and held in the highest
respect by the men.

Leaving Estramadura they e