As luck would have it, just as I was fairly puzzled, what should I come across but this handy stone, which the good priests of old did erect, as far as I can see, for no other purpose than to provide worthy cavalieros with an escape from such ignoble and scurvy enemies.

I had no time to spare in clambering up it, for I had to tear my heel out of the mouth of the foremost of them, and might have been dragged down by it had he not found my spur too tough a morsel for his chewing.

But surely one of my bullets must have readied its mark.' Lighting the touch-paper in his tobacco-box, he passed it over the body of the hound which had attacked me, and then of the other.
'Why, this one is riddled like a sieve,' he cried.

'What do you load your petronels with, good Master Clarke ?' 'With two leaden slugs.' 'Yet two leaden slugs have made a score of holes at the least! And of all things in this world, here is the neck of a bottle stuck in the brute's hide!' 'Good heavens!' I exclaimed.

'I remember.