However, there was no help for it. Master Sancho had to make the best of a bad bargain, and as nothing would induce him to share a room with Don, and nothing would induce Montoro to dispense with Don's company as a guardian under present circumstances, he and the dog had one room, and the worthy burgess of El Cuevo and the two merchants from Saragossa had to crowd into the other.
"One night," explained Master Sancho to his companions, "that young rascal I've taken a fancy to, persuaded me to share a sleeping apartment with him and that great brute, and in the night I snored,—I'm given to snore,—and the creature didn't approve, and woke me up with a sounding thump of its great paw. And there, behold! it stood reared up over me, with glaring eyes and a growling mouth. I warrant you, I prayed in one minute to more saints in the calendar than I've prayed to in many a long year before."
"Doubtless," assented one of the merchants with paling cheeks. "I have ever thought it a fearful great beast, and unsafe. But hearken! Methinks it is now quarrelling even with its own master. Ah!" with startled breathlessness—"it is shot."
Then there was a sudden rushing all over the inn. Screams, shrieks, shouts, slamming of doors, and above all, the continuous roar of Don's deep growling bark.
At length men and lights were gathered in Montoro's room, and there stood Montoro holding in a firm grip one of the smugglers. But the hero of the fray, and the conqueror, was grand old Don standing with one great fore-paw on the breast of one robber, the other fore-paw on the breast of Bautista's father, who lay weltering in his blood, shot by the other of his comrades in the attempt to shoot the dog.
"But my child, my little son," murmured the wretched, dying man.
"I will guard and care for him," said Montoro huskily.
He had been rescued from misery himself once, now he was the rescuer.