At the Venta or hostelry of the Mulinillo, which is situate on the
confines of the renowned plain of Alcudia, and on the road from Castile
to Andalusia, two striplings met by chance on one of the hottest days of
summer. One of them was about fourteen or fifteen years of age; the
other could not have passed his seventeenth year. Both were well formed,
and of comely features, but in very ragged and tattered plight. Cloaks
they had none; their breeches were of linen, and their stockings were
merely those bestowed on them by Nature. It is true they boasted shoes;
one of them wore alpargates,[6] or rather dragged them along at his
heels; the other had what might as well have been shackles for all the
good they did the wearer, being rent in the uppers, and without soles.
Their respective head-dresses were a montera[7] and a miserable
sombrero, low in the crown and wide in the brim. On his shoulder, and
crossing his breast like a scarf, one of them carried a shirt, the
colour of chamois leather; the body of this garment was rolled up and
thrust into one of its sleeves: the other, though travelling without
incumbrance, bore on his chest what seemed a large pack, but which
proved, on closer inspection, to be the remains of a starched ruff, now
stiffened with grease instead of starch, and so worn and frayed that it
looked like a bundle of hemp.

[6] The _alpargates_ are a kind of sandal made of cord.

[7] _Montera_, a low cap, without visor or front to shade the eyes.

Within this collar, wrapped up and carefully treasured, was a pack of
cards, excessively dirty, and reduced to an oval form by repeated paring
of their dilapidated corners. The lads were both much burned by the sun,