"And how did this other outrage take place?" asked Illan, who was the more curious of the two.
"It happened as you will soon hear, if those who related it to me were not liars, for at that time I was not in the service of Don Suero. There was in the neighbourhood of Carrion a maiden—a peasant girl, indeed, but one of the handsomest that could be found in Castile or Leon. Don Suero thought little of taking her from her father, as he was smitten by her beauty; and, using cunning devices, he succeeded in inducing both father and daughter to go to the castle of Carrion, and there he dishonoured the girl, and deprived the father of his sight, so that he might not be able to find his daughter, or take vengeance on him for what he had done. The girl, who was good and modest, resisted his wooing for a long time, but the count had recourse to violence, and Sancha, for such was the name of his victim, had to yield at last to the brutality of her jailer. Days and months went on, and Don Suero, who was much in love with the peasant girl, redoubled his caresses, hoping to make her love him also. The girl was becoming, by degrees, more yielding as time went on, softened by the tenderness and by the gifts of Don Suero. But behold! an old gipsy woman entered her apartment one day. This old woman was in the habit of telling fortunes, and the count put up with this, and with other queer things which she did. She and the girl, however, disappeared from the castle, some say by witchcraft, for they thought it could not be by any other means, and it was well known that the old gipsy was an expert in the black art, like all the rest of her race. It is easy for you to imagine the despair and the rage of the count when he was informed of the flight of Sancha. It is only necessary to say that, in order to give vent to his anger, he nearly killed all his servants and vassals with beatings, and, hoping to forget the girl, he established in his castle a kind of harem, to which he carries off the handsomest girls of the country, when he gets a chance of doing so."
"And have they never learned the abode of the unfortunate Sancha?"
"No; all the efforts which Don Suero has used to find her out have been in vain."
"And those of her father to discover her?"
"Have been also unavailing."
"What has become of him?"
"He seeks his daughter in every direction; but the unhappy man cannot find her. He goes from town to town, weeping over his loss, and earns something to live on by playing a lute."
"Anger of God! and are you not ashamed to remain in the service of such a wicked master?"
"I am ashamed, in truth, but you must know that I cannot go away from his residence; for if I lived far from the castle of Carrion, I should die of grief."