hufas_.'* Then she took me to a house very much like
Dorotea's, at the bottom of a little lane. Here she and another gipsy
woman washed and dressed my wounds, better than any army surgeon could
have done, gave me something, I know not what, to drink, and finally
made me lie down on a mattress, on which I went to sleep.

* A bulbous root, out of which rather a pleasant beverage is
manufactured.

"Probably the woman had mixed one of the soporific drugs of which they
know the secret in my drink, for I did not wake up till very late the
next day. I was rather feverish, and had a violent headache. It was some
time before the memory of the terrible scene in which I had taken part
on the previous night came back to me. After having dressed my wound,
Carmen and her friend, squatting on their heels beside my mattress,
exchanged a few words of '_chipe calli_,' which appeared to me to be
something in the nature of a medical consultation. Then they both of
them assured me that I should soon be cured, but that I must get out
of Seville at the earliest possible moment, for that, if I was caught
there, I should most undoubtedly be shot.

"'My boy,' said Carmen to me, 'you'll have to do something. Now that
the king won't give you either rice or haddock* you'll have to think of
earning your livelihood. You're too stupid for stealing _a pastesas_.**
But you are brave and active. If you have the pluck, take yourself off
to the coast and turn smuggler. Haven't I promised to get you hanged?
That's better than being shot, and besides, if you set about it
properly, you'll live like a prince as long as the _minons_*** and the
coast-guard don't lay their hands on your collar.'

* The ordinary food of a Spanish soldier.

** _Ustilar a pastesas_, to steal cleverly, to purloin
without violence.

*** A sort of volunteer corps.

"In this attractive guise did this fiend of a girl describe the new
career she was suggesting to me,--the only one, indeed, remaining, now
I had incurred the penalty of death. Shall I confess it, sir? She
persuaded me without much difficulty. This wild and dangerous life, it
seemed to me, would bind her and me more closely together. In future, I
thought, I should be able to make sure of her love.

"I had often heard talk of certain smugglers who travelled about
Andalusia, each riding a good horse, with his mistress behind him and
his blunderbuss in his fist. Already I saw myself trottin