"Help me take this fellow down," said the rider, in the rough tone of a man of few words.
The innkeeper handed the lamp to his wife, who had approached, and made haste to obey.
"Mercy to us! A dead man!" said she. "For the love of the Blessed Mother, sir, do not leave him in our house!"
"He is not dead," said the horseman, "he is sick; nurse him up--that is what women ore good for. Here is money to pay for the cure."
Saying this, he threw down a piece of gold, and disappeared, the resounding and measured gallop of his horse dying away gradually in the distance.
"If this is not a cool proceeding!" grumbled Martha. "What will you bet that he, with his own hands, has not put the man in this state? and he takes himself off and leaves him on ours! 'You cure him!' as if it were nothing to cure a man who is dead or dying! As if this inn were an hospital! The bully thinks he has only to command, as if he were the king!"
"Hush!" exclaimed the innkeeper, alarmed, "will you be still, long-tongue! Talk that way of Diego! Women are the very devil! What is the use of grumbling, since you know there is nothing for it but to do as these people tell us! Besides, this is a work of charity, so let's be about it."
They prepared, as well as they could, a bed in a garret.
"He has no sign of blow or wound," said Andres, as he was undressing the patient; "so you see, wife, it is a sickness like any other."