He winked with a terrible significance at the last words.
“So, then, I am not only to bark at the asses all day, but I am to bay the wolves by night?” said I, half indignantly.
“Lupo did it,” responded he, with a nod.
“He was a dog, Señhor Mijo,” said I.
“Ah, that he was!” added he, in a tone very different from my remark, accompanying it with a most disparaging glance at my ragged habiliments. I read the whole meaning of the look at once, and hung my head, abashed at the disparaging comparison.
He waited patiently for my reply, and, perceiving that I was still silent, he said, “Well, is it a bargain?”
“Agreed,” said I, with a sigh; and wondering if Fortune had yet any lower depths in store for me, I followed him to his hut. Mijo proceeded to acquaint me with all the details of my office, and also certain peculiarities of the two beasts for whose especial misery I was engaged. If compassion could have entered into my nature, it might have moved me at sight of them. Their haunches and hocks were notched and scored with the marks of teeth, while their tails were a series of round balls, like certain old-fashioned bell-ropes, the result of days of suffering.
“I am so accustomed to the name, I must call you 'Lupo,'” said Mijo; “you have no objection?”
“Not in the least,” said I; “if a 'dog in office,' why not a dog in name?”
That same day I was conducted to the “Tienda del Gato,” the shop of “The Cat,” at the sign of which animal La Señhora Dias resided. It was a small cottage at the very extremity of the village, in a somewhat pretty garden; and here a kind of canteen was held, at which the settlers procured cigars, brandy, and other like luxuries, in exchange for their “tickets of labor.”