The student looked up from his book. "It is a great
Age!" he said and returned to his reading.

When we had finished dinner, we paid the tall, gaunt
woman and leaving the robbers, if robbers they were, still
at table, went out into the street. Here the friars, the alcalde
and the lawyer moved in the direction of the small, staring
white and ruined mosque that was to be transformed into
the church of San Jago the Deliverer. That was the one
thing of which the friars had spoken. A long bench ran by
inn wall and here the shipmaster took his seat and began to
discourse with those already there. Book under arm, the
student moved dreamily down the opposite lane. Juan
Lepe walked away alone.

Through the remainder of this day he had now company
and adventure without, now solitude and adventure within.
That night he spent in a ruined tower where young
trees grew and an owl was his comrade and he read the face
of a glorious moon. Dawn. He bathed in a stream that
ran by the mound of the tower and ate a piece of bread from
his wallet and took the road.

The sun mounted above the trees. A man upon a mule
came up behind me and was passing. "There is a stone
wedged in his shoe," I said. The rider drew rein and I
lifted the creature's foreleg and took out the pebble. The
rider made search for a bit of money. I said that the deed
was short and easy and needed no payment, whereupon he
put up the coin and regarded me out of his fine blue eyes.