ng box, and had taken it out full of gold
crowns. From this Don Rafael calculated that she might have something
about five hundred crowns, which, with two hundred of his own, and a
gold chain he wore, seemed to him no bad provision for the journey; the
more so, as he felt confident of meeting Marco Antonio in Barcelona.
They pursued their journey I rapidly without accident or impediment
until they arrived within two leagues of a town called Igualada, which
is nine leagues from Barcelona, and there they learned that a cavalier
who was going as ambassador to Rome, was waiting at Barcelona for the
galleys, which had not yet arrived. Greatly cheered by this news, they
pushed on until they came to the verge of a small wood, from which they
saw a man running, and looking back over his shoulder with every
appearance of terror. "What is the matter with you, good man?" said Don
Rafael, going up to him. "What has happened to you, that you seem so
frightened and run so fast?"

"Have I not good cause to be frightened and to run fast," said the man,
"since I have escaped by a miracle from a gang of robbers in that wood?"

"Malediction! Lord save us!" exclaimed the muleteer. "Robbers at this
hour! By my halidom, they'll leave us as bare as we were born."

"Don't make yourself uneasy, brother," replied the man from the wood,
"for the robbers have by this time gone away, after leaving more than
thirty passengers stripped to their shirts and tied to trees, with the
exception of one only, whom they have left to unbind the rest as soon as
they should have passed a little hill they pointed out to him."

"If that be so," said Calvete, the muleteer, "we may proceed without
fear, for where the robbers have made an attack, they do not show
themselves again for some days. I say this with confidence, as a man who
has been twice in their hands, and knows all their ways."

This fact being confirmed by the stranger, Don Rafael resolved to go on.
They entered the wood, and had not advanced far, when they came upon the
persons who had been robbed, and who were more than forty in number. The
man who had been left free, had unbound some of them; but his work was
not yet complete, and several of them were still tied to the trees. They
presented a strange spectacle, some of them stripped naked, others
dressed in the tattered garments of the robbers; some weeping over their
disaster, some laughing at the strange figure the others made in their
robber'