"Eh! ah—and you?" I asked, in a thick voice.
"Martin Secco, at your service, Señor Caballero!"
"Here was a dénouement!
"Good Heavens!" thought I, mechanically resuming my rifle; "if the stories of Pedrillo should be true."
I scrutinised my host and hostess.
Martin had a broad and open visage, with keen eyes, and a black beard as thick as a horse-brush; a wide mouth, that frequently expanded in grins; but in those grins no radiance ever lit up his glassy eyes. The mouth laughed; but they remained immovable—invariably a bad sign. His forehead receded, and his ears were placed high upon his head. At the first glance, I concluded that my señor patron was an unmitigated brute. His figure was somewhat portly, and encased in a brown jacket, brown knee-breeches, and black stockings; he wore his hair confined in a caul, and had a yellow sash round his waist.
His wife was, as Pedrillo had described Inez Secco, a Basque, for her Spanish was almost unintelligible; and her coarse black hair was plaited in one thick tail, which reached to her heels. Her gown was of rough red cloth, with tight sleeves and a short skirt, displaying a pair of yellow worsted stockings and leather sandals, fastened by thongs above the ancle. Her face was coarse and bloated; but the expression of her eye was terrible. It hovered between the bright ferocious glare of a snake, and the glazed orb of an arrant sot. She scanned me closely; and I thought the old devil (she was a Spanish woman, and past forty,) was accurately appraising the value of all I had on.
"Well, señora patrona," said I, "what can I have for supper?"
"The señor has come at a bad time, for we have little or no provisions in our larder." (The larder of every Spanish inn has been in the same condition since the days of Cervantes and Gongora.) "For now this road between Malaga and Antequera is but little frequented after noon-day, owing to the terrible robberies and the four assassinations committed by Juan Roa, during the last Solano. Caramba! 't is very hard that we should suffer for him."
"What can I have, then?"