er comrades. The wounded woman was crying out,
'A confessor, a confessor! I'm killed!' Carmen said nothing at all. She
clinched her teeth and rolled her eyes like a chameleon. 'What's this?'
I asked. I had hard work to find out what had happened, for all the
work-girls talked at once. It appeared that the injured girl had boasted
she had money enough in her pocket to buy a donkey at the Triana Market.
'Why,' said Carmen, who had a tongue of her own, 'can't you do with a
broom?' Stung by this taunt, it may be because she felt herself rather
unsound in that particular, the other girl replied that she knew nothing
about brooms, seeing she had not the honour of being either a gipsy
or one of the devil's godchildren, but that the Senorita Carmen would
shortly make acquaintance with her donkey, when the _Corregidor_ took
her out riding with two lackeys behind her to keep the flies off.
'Well,' retorted Carmen, 'I'll make troughs for the flies to drink
out of on your cheeks, and I'll paint a draught-board on them!'* And
thereupon, slap, bank! She began making St. Andrew's crosses on the
girl's face with a knife she had been using for cutting off the ends of
the cigars.

* _Pintar un javeque_, "paint a xebec," a particular type of
ship. Most Spanish vessels of this description have a
checkered red and white stripe painted around them.

"The case was quite clear. I took hold of Carmen's arm. 'Sister mine,' I
said civilly, 'you must come with me.' She shot a glance of recognition
at me, but she said, with a resigned look: 'Let's be off. Where is my
mantilla?' She put it over her head so that only one of her great eyes
was to be seen, and followed my two men, as quiet as a lamb. When we
got to the guardroom the sergeant said it was a serious job, and he must
send her to prison. I was told off again to take her there. I put her
between two dragoons, as a corporal does on such occasions. We started
off for the town. The gipsy had begun by holding her tongue. But when we
got to the _Calle de la Serpiente_--you know it, and that it earns its
name by its many windings--she began by dropping her mantilla on to her
shoulders, so as to show me her coaxing little face, and turning round
to me as well as she could, she said:

"'_Oficial mio_, where are you taking me to?'

"'To prison, my poor child,' I replied, as gently as I could, just as
any kind-hearted soldier is bound to speak to a prisoner, and especially
to a woma