CHAPTER IV
Which Treats of Don Quixote's Further Adventures
IT was dawn when Don Quixote quitted the inn. He decided to return home to provide himself with money, shirts, and a squire, as the innkeeper had suggested, and so he turned his horse's head toward his village.
He had not gone far, however, when he heard a feeble cry from the depths of a thicket on the roadside, as of some one in pain. He paused to thank Heaven for having favored him with this opportunity of fulfilling the obligation he had undertaken and gathering the fruit of his ambition; for he was certain that he had been called on from above to give aid and protection to some one in dire need. He quickly turned Rocinante in the direction from which the cries seemed to come; and he had gone but a few paces into the wood when he saw a youth, stripped to the waist and tied to a tree, being flogged in a merciless way by a powerful farmer. All the while the boy was crying out in his agony: "I won't do it again, master! I won't do it again! I promise I'll take better care of the sheep hereafter!"
When Don Quixote saw what was going on he became most indignant.
"Discourteous knight," he commanded in angry tones, "it ill becomes you to assail one who cannot defend himself! Mount your steed and take your lance! I will make you know that you are behaving like a coward!"
The farmer looked up and saw Don Quixote in full armor, brandishing a lance over his head. He gave himself up for dead, then, and answered meekly:
"Sir knight, the youth I am chastising is my servant. I employ him to watch a flock of sheep, and he is so careless that he loses one for me every day. And when I punish him for being careless, he accuses me of being a miser, saying that I do it that I might escape paying him the wages I owe him. That, I swear, is a sinful lie!"
But the farmer's defense only angered Don Quixote all the more. He threatened to run the man through with his lance if he did not release the boy at once and pay him every penny he owed him in wages. Don Quixote then helped the lad to add up how much nine months' wages at seven reals a month might be, and found that it would make sixty-three reals; and the farmer was given his choice between paying his debt and dying upon the spot. The farmer replied, trembling with fear, that the sum was not so great and asked Don Quixote to take into account and deduct three pairs of shoes he had given the boy and a real for two blood-lettings when he was sick. But Don Quixote would not listen to this at all. He declared that the shoes and the blood-lettings had already been paid for by the blows the farmer had given the boy without cause, for, said he, "If he spoiled the leather of the shoes you paid for, you have damaged that of his body; and if the barber took blood from him when he was sick, you have drawn it when he was sound; so on that score he owes you nothing."
When the farmer had heard his final judgment pronounced, he commenced to wail that he had no money about him, and pleaded with Don Quixote to let Andres, the lad, come home with him, when he would pay him real by real. Upon hearing this Andres turned to our knight errant and warned him that once he had departed his master would flay him like a Saint Bartholomew; but Don Quixote reassured him, saying now that his master had sworn to him by the knighthood that he, Don Quixote, had conferred upon him, justice would be done, and he himself would guarantee the payment.