lady with us, which will be the more practicable, as the same guides who conducted him will be only too glad to serve us on their return the next morning. To this proposition we very readily agree, and supper being ended, Don Sanchez sends for the guides, two hardy mountaineers, who very readily agree to take us this way the next morning, if the weather permits. And so we all, wishing Don Lopez a good-night, to our several chambers.
I was awoke in the middle of the night, as it seemed to me, by a great commotion below of Spanish shouting and roaring with much jingling of bells; and looking out of window I perceived lanterns hanging here and there in the courtyard, and the muleteers packing their goods to depart, with a fine clear sky full of stars overhead. And scarce had I turned into my warm bed again, thanking God I was no muleteer, when in comes the Don with a candle, to say the guide will have us moving at once if we would reach Ravellos (our Spanish town) before night. So I to Dawson's chamber, and he to Moll's, and in a little while we all shivering down to the great kitchen, where is never a muleteer left, but only a great stench of garlic, to eat a mess of soup, very hot and comforting. And after that out into the dark (there being as yet but a faint flush of green and primrose colour over towards the east), where four fresh mules (which Don Sanchez overnight had bargained to exchange against our horses, as being the only kind of cattle fit for this service) are waiting for us with other two mules, belonging to our guides, all very curiously trapped out with a network of wool and little jingling bells. Then when Don Sanchez had solemnly debated whether we should not awake Don Lopez to say farewell,
