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They dined, and after the cloth had been removed and they had amused themselves for a while with Sancho's rich conversation, the melancholy sound of a fife and harsh discordant drum made itself heard.
Sancho's words made the duchess laugh again and gave her fresh amusement, and dismissing him to sleep she went away to tell the duke the conversation she had had with him, and between them they plotted and arranged to play a joke upon Don Quixote that was to be a rare one and entirely in knight-errantry style, and in that same style they practised several upon him, so much in keeping and so clever that they form the best adventures this great history contains.
It was now 'so dark, says the history, 'that they could see nothing; but they had not gone two hundred paces when a great noise of water reached their ears. . . . The sound rejoiced them exceedingly; and, stopping to listen from whence it came, they heard on a sudden another dreadful noise, which abated their pleasure occasioned by that of the water, especially Sancho's. . . . They heard a dreadful din of irons and chains rattling across one another, and giving mighty strokes in time and measure which, together with the furious noise of the water, would have struck terror into any other heart than that of Don Quixote. For him it was but an opportunity for some valorous achievement.
Don Quixote would not enter the village, although the peasant as well as the bachelor pressed him; he excused himself, however, on the grounds, amply sufficient in his opinion, that it was the custom of knights-errant to sleep in the fields and woods in preference to towns, even were it under gilded ceilings; and so turned aside a little out of the road, very much against Sancho's will, as the good quarters he had enjoyed in the castle or house of Don Diego came back to his mind.
Straight from Sancho's side he walked down the corral, halted behind two rangy, hard-looking steeds that showed still the effects of recent severe usage, and these he studied coolly and thoroughly a few minutes, while peering from two narrow slits in the ranch wall between the windows two sun-tanned frontiersmen as closely studied him.
"We hope to catch some of you gentlemen when you haven't been playing poker," said he, striving to stifle his chagrin. "Who got it all, anyhow?" he asked, with an eye to future business. "Ah, yes might have known it," he continued in response to the rueful admission of one of the party. "Wonderfully smart outfit that at Cooke, wonderfully most as smart as some of our people at Sancho's.
It is said that the cathedral begun in 1185 or 1186 was dedicated in 1204, so it must have been still incomplete when Yakub's successful invasion took place, and only finished after the Christians had again recovered the town, though it is difficult to see how the church can have been dedicated in that year as the town remained in Moorish power till after Dom Sancho's death in 1211.
Such was the conversation that passed between master and man; and Don Fernando and Cardenio, apprehensive of Sancho's making a complete discovery of their scheme, towards which he had already gone some way, resolved to hasten their departure, and calling the landlord aside, they directed him to saddle Rocinante and put the pack-saddle on Sancho's ass, which he did with great alacrity.
Sancho's back pained him fearfully, but he was much relieved when he learned from his master who had seen the accident that it was caused by his having been smitten by a man armed with a staff. The cause being removed as it were, Sancho was jubilant, although his heart and courage fell as soon as he, in the course of his usual chattering, touched upon the subject of knight-errantry.
At last they entered amongst some pleasant trees that stood a little out of the road, where, leaving empty the saddle and pannel of Rozinante and Dapple, they stretched themselves upon the green grass, and supped from Sancho's wallet. He, having made himself a heavy and flexible whip of Dapple's headstall and reins, retired about twenty paces from his master, amidst some beeches.
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