No thought of the money I had been so near to recovering disturbed my repose, nor indeed for three full days after did I so much as remember to have left the treasure bags behind me in the hurry of my flight.
CHAPTER XVII
HOW I FOUND AN OLD FRIEND IN A STRANGE PLACE,
AND HOW PTOLEMY RENEWED HIS STUDY OF THE LATIN TONGUE
I was in the midst of a most excellent and comforting dream of Idonia, to whom I was again happily united, and we (if I rightly call it to mind), Duke and Duchess of Salamanca or of some place like-sounding, when I was roughly awakened by the jogging forward of the cart, to which succeeded that a head was thrust in betwixt the curtains of my extemporary great bed, and a voice cried: "Woe worth the day! what gallows'-food is here?"
Making no question but that I was arrested, yet being still bedrowsed by sleep, I felt for my sword to deliver it up, but finding it not, said very stately: "Master Corregidor of Biscay, I yield myself prisoner," and so lay quiet, expecting what he should do further.
But that he did, squared so ill with all I had ever heard tell of the manners and behaviour of Corregidors or persons anyway notable, that I sat up and stared upon him gaping; for he gave but one look at me, and after, with such a squealing of laughter as one might, suppose coneys to utter when they catch a weasel sleeping, he parted the curtains wider and leapt into the place where I lay, when he seized me by both my hands and wrung them up and down as they were flails.
I was wide awake enough now, but yet for my life could not comprehend the carter's apparent joy of seeing me, though as to that, 'twas a better welcome than I had looked for, either from the Corregidor of my dreams, or from the rabble I was so vehemently pursued by.
Now when this mad fellow had something slackened the excess of his complacency, I took occasion to demand whether my remaining within that frame of timber (that was none too big for us twain) were irksome to him. "For," said I, "if it be not, I have my reasons why I should wish not to leave it."
At this he ceased his exercise altogether and, withdrawing both his hands from mine, regarded me reproachfully.