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He could see nothing yet a while, but surely he heard a sound of snoring? Then he crept in, and, presently, by the red light of the burning embers, he saw a great black-bearded man stretched at length upon a rug of sheepskins, and by his side an axe.
The stranger had not awakened to partake of the soup, and his son had fallen asleep on the ground. Taking two white sheepskins from the heap of sacks in the corner, the old man doubled them up, and lifting the boy's head gently from the slate on which it rested, placed the skins beneath it. "Poor lambie, poor lambie!" he said, tenderly patting the great rough bear-like head; "tired is he!"
In a few minutes the sheepskins were secured in their proper places, and Day stood before us a ghost of the first magnitude, and looking hideous enough to frighten his Satanic Majesty himself had he been encountered in the vicinity of Mount Tarrengower. "I ain't got much beauty," Day said, while we were admiring him, "'cos I trust to inside appearances.
At length we came to two streams which join their forces, and would seem to flow across the plain to the bottom of the hills. Here savage herds were under the guardianship of shepherds as wild as they were themselves, clothed in a species of sheepskins, and carrying a sharp spear with which they herd and sometimes kill their buffaloes.
Slaves are not exported from Morocco. Besides the payment of special impost on exportation, wool pays a duty of three dollars per quintal, and two pounds of powder when dirty, and double when washed. A bullock pays export duty ten dollars, and a sheep one. Sheepskins eight dollars the hundred, bullock-skins three dollars per quintal, and goat-skins the same.
The race is barbarous, and then it changes to civilized; in the one case the strong rob the weak by brute force; in the other the crafty rob the unwary by finesse. The latter is a more agreeable state of things; but it comes to about the same. The robber used to knock us down and take away our sheepskins; he now administers chloroform and relieves us of our watches.
They read of those Jewish prophets described in Hebrews: "They went about in sheepskins, in goatskins; ... wandering in deserts and mountains and caves, and the holes of the earth." They pointed to Elijah and his school of prophets; to John the Baptist, with his raiment of camel's hair and a leathern girdle about his loins, whose meat was locusts and wild honey.
And then as he sat with his knee drawn up, his head bowed upon it, the weakness of slumber gradually stole away his watchfulness and his concern. Some time later, before the deliberate dawn of a March day had put out the last of the greater stars, two men on horses descended the declivity just above the shelter of sheepskins and attracted by the dull glow of the fire drew up cautiously.
Montoya made a place for him on the thick sheepskins and asked him if he had eaten. Yes, he had had supper, but he had no blankets. Could Montoya let him have a blanket until he had earned enough money to buy one? The old herder told him that he could have the nephew's blankets; Pedro was to leave camp next day and go home. As for money, Montoya did not pay wages.
He wore an otter skin cap that covered his ears, and a great cloak of sheepskins. "Give you good day, my lord," said the old woman, her eyes brightening as she offered him a seat beside the fire. "Knew you ever so cold a day as this, Elspeth? By the rood, but the frost bites keenly! And you, how can you live in this cold cell? It grieves me to see you here.
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