San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1895-08-25

We WeIo given llo Dcfob IOc1u III ouO
house to ourselves.
About s o'clock, as we were about to
sit down to supper, the innkeeper comes
in to tell us that Spanish grandee is
below, who has been travelling for hours
in the storm, and then she asks very
humbly if our excellencies will permit
her to lay him bed in our room when
we have done with it, as she can bestow
him nowhere else (the muleteers filling
her house to the very cockloft) and has
not the heart to send him on to st. De-
nys in this pitiless driving rain. To this
Don Sanchez replies that Spanish gen.
tleman is welcome to all we can offer
him, and Herewith sends down a
mighty civil message, begging his COM
pany at our table.
Moll has just time to whip on a piece
of finery, and we to put on our best
manners, when the landlady returns,
followed by stout, robust Spaniard,
in an old coat several times too small
for him, whom she introduced as Don
Lopez de Calvados.
Don Lopez makes us reverence, and
then. with his shoulders up to his ears
and like gestures, makes us harangue
at some length, but this, being Spanish,
Ia as heather Greek to us. However,
Don Sanchez explains that our visitor is
excusing his appearance as being forced
to change his wet clothes for what the
innkeeper can lend him, and so we,
grinning to express our amiability, all
sit down to table and set to-Moll with
her most finicking, delicate airs and
graces, and Dawson and / silent as
frogs, with understanding nothing of
the dons' conversation. This, we learn
from Don Sanchez after supper, has
turned chiefly ON the best means of
crossing into Spain, from which it ap-
pears there are two passes through the
mountains, both leading to the same
town, but one more circuitous than the
other.
Don Lopez has come by the latter be-
cause the former is used by the mule
teers, who are not always the most pleas
ant companions one can have in dan
gerous road, and for this reason he rec
ommends US to take his way, especially
as we have young 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, go to our several chambers.
was awoke in the middle of the
night, as it seemed to me, by great
commotion below of Spanish shouting
and roaring, with much jingling of bells,
and looking out of the window per-
ceived lanterns hanging here and there
in the courtyard and the muleteers pack
ing their goods to depart, with a fine
,lear sky full of stars overhead. And
scarce had turned into my warm bed
again, thanking God was no muleteer,
when in comes the don with a candle to
say that the guide will have us moving
at once if we would reach Ravellos (our
Spanish town. before night. So to
Dawson's chamber, and he to Moll's,
and in little while we were all shiv-
ering down in the great kitchen, where
is never a muleteer left, but only great
stencil of garlic, to eat a mess Of soup
very hot and comforting. And after that
out into the dark (there being as yet
but faint flush of green and primrose
color toward the east), where four fresh
mules (Which Don Sanchez overnight
I'd bargained to exchange against our
horses as being the only kind of cattle fit
for this service) are waiting for us, with
two other mules belonging to our guides,
all very curiously trapped out with a
network of wool and little jingling bells.
Then when Don Sanchez had solemn
ly debated whether we should not
awake Don Lopez to say farewell, and
we had persuaded him that it would be
kinder to let him sleep on, we mounted
into our high, fantastic saddles, and set