night's
lodging; when not far from this, two men--footpads I suppose they were--
rushed out from the roadside, and made straight at me. One took the
right, the other left. But I've good long arms, as you see, pretty
strong too; and so I was able to keep them off for a while. Several
times they caught hold of my wrists; but I succeeded in jerking them
free again. I believe I could have wrestled them both, but that one
getting angry, pulled out a long-bladed knife, and threatened to cut my
throat with it. _Por dios_! I had to surrender then, seeing he was in
earnest."

While giving this somewhat prolix account of an altogether imaginary
adventure, he had started to his feet, and accompanied his speech with a
series of pantomimic gestures; dancing and flinging his arms about, as
he professed to have done while defending himself against the footpads.
The grotesqueness of the performance, though seen only in the dim
light--for he kept under the shadow--set his listeners to laughing.
Little dreamt they why he was treating them to the spectacle, or how
cleverly he was outwitting them.

But there was a third spectator of the scene, unknown to all of them,
who was aware of it. The _cochero_ could not at first tell what were
the things striking him in the pit of the stomach, as if he was being
pelted with pebbles! But he could see they came from the hands of the
hunchback, flung behind in his repeated contortions and gesticulations.

Moreover, that they glistened while passing through the air, and looked
whitish where they lay, after falling at his own feet.

"Well; what did they do to you then?" asked the corporal, when he and
his comrade had finished their guffaw. "Stripped you clean, as you've
said?"

"_Ay, Dios_! Just that, Senor. Took everything I had, except the rags
I wear; and to them I might well have made them welcome."

"Now, are you sure they took everything?" questioned the other, still
suspicious. The earnestness of the dwarfs affirmation made him so.

"Of course, Senor. Quite sure. I'll swear to it, if you like."

"Oh, there's no need for the formality of an oath. Simpler to search
you! and more satisfactory. Draw up here in front of me!"

The hunchback obeyed with an air of confident alacrity. He had no
reluctance to being searched now, knowing his pockets were empty. Of
which the searcher satisfied himself by groping about among the rags,
and sounding every receptacle where coin might