gasped. "Why,
master, you might as well tell me that it snows. Never a knight, nor a
giant, nor a man can I see."

"How!" answered Don Quixote, "canst thou not hear their horses neigh,
and their drums beating?"

"Drums!" said Sancho. "Not I! I hear only the bleating of sheep."

"Since you are afraid," said the Knight, "stand aside, and I will go
by myself to fight."

With that, he galloped down on to the plain, shouting, leaving Sancho
bawling to him, "Hold, sir! Stop! For Heaven's sake come back. As sure
as I'm a sinner, they are only harmless sheep. Come back, I say."

But Don Quixote, paying not the least heed, galloped on furiously and
charged into the middle of the sheep, spearing them right and left,
trampling the living and the dead under "Rozinante's" feet. The
shepherds, finding that he took no notice of their shouts, now hurled
stones at him from their slings, and one big stone presently hit the
Knight fair in his ribs and doubled him up in the saddle.

Gasping for breath, with all speed Don Quixote got from his wallet a
bottle filled with a mixture he had made, a mixture which he firmly
believed to be a certain cure for all wounds. Of this he took a long
gulp, but just at that moment another big stone hit him such a rap on
the mouth that the bottle was smashed into a thousand pieces, and half
of his teeth were knocked out.

Down dropped the Knight on the ground, and the shepherds thinking that
he was killed, ran away, taking with them seven dead sheep which he
had slain.

Sancho Panza found his master in a very bad way, with nearly all the
teeth gone from one side of his mouth, and with a terrible pain under
his ribs.

"Ah! master," he said, "I told you they were sheep. Why would not you
listen to me?"

"Sheep! Sancho. No, no! There is nothing so easy for a wizard like
Freston as to change things from one shape to the other. I will wager
if you now mount your ass and ride over the hill after them, you will
find no sheep there, but the knights and squires come back to their
own shape, and the armies marching as when we first saw them."

Now, after this and many other adventures (about which, perhaps, you
may some day read for yourself), Don Quixote and Sancho Panza rode
away into the mountains, for the Knight was sorely in need of a quiet
place in which to rest.

So weary were he and his squire, that one night, when they had ridden
into a wood, and it chanced that the horse and the ass stood st