“What do you go to do to-morrow?”

“The Lord only knows,” answers Jack, and Don Sanchez, lifting his eyebrows as if he considers this no answer at all, he continues:  “We cannot go hence with none of our stage things; and if we could, I see not how we are to act our play, now that our villain is gone, with a plague to him!  I doubt but we must sell all that we have for the few shillings they will fetch to get us out of this hobble.”

“With our landlord’s permission,” remarks Don Sanchez, dryly.

“Permission!” cries Dawson, in a passion.  “I ask no man’s permission to do what I please with my own.”

“Suppose he claims these things in payment of the money you owe him.  What then?” asks the Don.

“We never thought of that, Kit,” says Dawson, turning to me in a pucker.  “But ’tis likely enough he has, for I observed he was mighty careless whether we found our thief or not.  That’s it, sure enough.  We have nought to hope.  All’s lost!”

With that he drops his elbows on his knees, and stares into the fire with a most desponding countenance, being in that stage of liquor when a man must either laugh or weep.

“Come, Jack,” says I.  “You are not used to yield like this.  Let us make the best of a bad lot, and face the worst like men.  Though we trudge hence with nothing but the rags on our backs, we shall be no worse off to-morrow than we were this morning.”

“Why, that’s true enough!” cries he, plucking up his courage.  “Let the thieving rascal take our poor nag and our things for his payment, and much good may they do him.  We will wipe this out of our memory the moment we leave his cursed inn behind us.”

It seemed to me that this would not greatly advance us, and maybe Don Sanchez thought the same, for he presently asks: 

“And what then?”

“Why, Senor,” replies Dawson, “we will face each new buffet as it comes, and make a good fight of it till we’re beat.  A man may die but once.”

“You think only of yourselves,” says the Don, very quietly.

“And pray, saving your Senor’s presence, who else should we think of?”

“The child above,” answers the Don, a little more sternly than he had yet spoken.  “Is a young creature like that to bear the buffets you are so bold to meet?  Can you offer her no shelter from the wind and rain but such as chance offers? make no provision for the time when she is left alone, to protect her against the evils that lie in the path of friendless maids?”

“God forgive me,” says Jack, humbly.  And then we could say nothing, for thinking what might befall Moll if we should be parted, but sat there under the keen eye of Don Sanchez, looking helplessly into the fire.  And there was no sound until Jack’s pipe, slipping from his hand, fell and broke in pieces upon the hearth.  Then rousing himself up and turning to Don Sanchez, he says: 

“The Lord help her, Senor, if we find no good friend to lend us a few shillings for our present wants.”