_Of the several parts that we are appointed to play._


Finding a sheltered secret corner, we made a very hasty breakfast of
these stolen dainties, and since we had not the heart to restore them to
our innkeeper, so we had not the face to chide Moll for her larceny, but
made light of the business and ate with great content and some mirth.

A drizzly rain falling and turning the snow into slush, we kept under
the shelter of the shed, and this giving us scope for the reflection Don
Sanchez had counselled, my compunctions were greatly shaken by the
consideration of our present position and the prospect of worse. When I
thought of our breakfast that Moll had stolen, and how willingly we
would all have eaten a dinner got by the same means, I had to
acknowledge that certainly we were all thieves at heart; and this
conclusion, together with sitting all day doing nothing in the raw cold,
did make the design of Don Sanchez seem much less heinous to me than it
appeared the night before, when I was warm and not exceedingly sober,
and indeed towards dusk I came to regard it as no bad thing at all.

About six comes back our Don on a fine horse, and receives our
salutations with a cool nod--we standing there of a row, looking our
sweetest, like hungry dogs in expectation of a bone. Then in he goes to
the house without a word, and now my worst fear was that he had thought
better of his offer and would abandon it. So there we hang about the
best part of an hour, now thinking the Don would presently send for us,
and then growing to despair of everything but to be left in the cold
forgotten; but in the end comes Master Landlord to tell us his worship