“Landlord,” I heard him roar, “if you do not bring me a cup of sack to cool my throat, which I have blistered already with your damnable gruel, the worms will have fresh meat in their larder.”
He pointed this threat by thrusting his dagger into the loose earth which formed the floor.
“Ha! Spaniardo,” said he, observing that I had opened my eyes, “do I perceive you to be awake already? You have slept round the clock. What a notable gift is that of youth.”
“I give you good morrow, Sir Richard Pendragon,” said I, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and slowly recalling my situation.
Hardly had I done so than I remembered that eight crowns was my fortune, in an old piece of goatskin. Instantly I pressed my hand where I had placed it last. How shall I record the terrible pang that seized me when I pressed and felt in vain.
I got up and looked all about my corner; looked under the settle on which I had lain; examined the dry earth which composed the floor; felt in all my pockets yet again, and even groped among the ashes of the newly kindled fire. But my purse was not. I cannot tell you what a desperate pang overcame me when I discovered that I was bereft of every maravedi I had in the world.
By the time I had concluded these investigations the Englishman, who had been far too much employed with his breakfast to heed these actions, had taken himself off out of doors. I was glad to find him gone; and I proceeded to conduct my search in every corner of the place, in the vain hope that it had fallen from me in those energetic passages of the previous night. But I should have done as well to look in a sandpit for a precious stone.
I was standing with my hands tucked in my doublet, and trying ruefully enough to confront my position, when the innkeeper entered. I was hungry, yet I had no money with which to purchase a breakfast. Further, I had not a friend; I had not a home; I was in a country as foreign to me as a distant land; and I hardly dared in this predicament to turn to a stranger to crave a word of kindness. And now did I feel so tender in my years, and so plainly did I discern that my experience of mankind was insufficient for my needs, that even as I stood I felt despair spread over me in a manner that I should have thought impossible. So far was I from my valiancy of the previous evening that I nearly shed tears before the innkeeper when I mentioned to him my loss.
Now here you shall mark the difference between a man who has breeding and a man who has not. No sooner did I confide my loss to the innkeeper and that I was left as penniless as a beggar, than this notorious coward, who the previous night had called for my aid, pulled the wryest mouth I ever saw and looked upon me rudely.
“Does Pedro understand by this,” he said in a desperate tone of injury, “that you will not pay him for your lodging and the quantities of wine and victual you had of him last night?”