DON QUIXOTE

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head and reserve himself for a more favourable occasion and opportunity.
The robbers made haste to search Dapple, and did not leave him a single
thing of all he carried in the alforjas and in the valise; and lucky it
was for Sancho that the duke's crowns and those he brought from home were
in a girdle that he wore round him; but for all that these good folk
would have stripped him, and even looked to see what he had hidden
between the skin and flesh, but for the arrival at that moment of their
captain, who was about thirty-four years of age apparently, strongly
built, above the middle height, of stern aspect and swarthy complexion.
He was mounted upon a powerful horse, and had on a coat of mail, with
four of the pistols they call petronels in that country at his waist. He
saw that his squires (for so they call those who follow that trade) were
about to rifle Sancho Panza, but he ordered them to desist and was at
once obeyed, so the girdle escaped. He wondered to see the lance leaning
against the tree, the shield on the ground, and Don Quixote in armour and
dejected, with the saddest and most melancholy face that sadness itself
could produce; and going up to him he said, "Be not so cast down, good