knives and daggers in their tiny hands. Of the patriotic troop not
one appeared to have fallen; and when, after their enemies had
retreated with howlings of fiendish despair, they told their
numbers, only one man was missing, who was never seen again, and
that man was Alvarez.

In the midst of the combat, the tempest, which had for a long time
been gathering, burst over Logrono, in lightning, thunder,
darkness, and vehement hail.

A man of the town asserted that the last time he had seen Alvarez,
the latter was far in advance of his companions, defending himself
desperately against three powerful young heathen, who seemed to be
acting under the direction of a tall woman who stood nigh, covered
with barbaric ornaments, and wearing on her head a rude silver
crown. (18)

Such is the tale of the Bookseller of Logrono, and such is the
narrative of the attempt of the Gitanos to sack the town in the
time of pestilence, which is alluded to by many Spanish authors,
but more particularly by the learned Francisco de Cordova, in his
DIDASCALIA, one of the most curious and instructive books within
the circle of universal literature.



CHAPTER IV