“True,” observed Andrew, “you left it on your right, about twenty leagues from this.  So you see what a straight road you were taking, if you were going thither.”

“The road I did intend to take was that to Seville; for there I should find a Genoese gentleman, a great friend of the count my relation, who is in the habit of exporting large quantities of silver ingots to Genoa; and my design is, that he should send me with his carriers, as one of themselves, by which means I may safely reach Carthagena, and thence pass over to Italy; for two galleys are expected shortly to ship some silver.  This is my story, good friend:  was I not right in saying it is the result of pure ill luck, rather than disappointed love?  Now if these senores gitanos will take me in their company to Seville, supposing they are bound thither, I will pay them handsomely; for I believe that I should travel more safely with them, and have some respite from the fear that haunts me.”

“Yes, they will take you,” said Andrew; “or if you cannot go with our band—­for as yet I know not that we are for Andalusia—­you can go with another which we shall fall in with in a couple of days; and if you give them some of the money you have about you, they will be able and willing to help you out of still worse difficulties.”  He then left the young man, and reported to the other gipsies what the stranger desired, and the offer he had made of good payment for their services.

They were all for having their guest remain in the camp; but Preciosa was against it; and her grandmother said, that she could not go to Seville or its neighbourhood, on account of a hoax she had once played off upon a capmaker named Truxillo, well known in Seville.  She had persuaded him to put himself up to his neck in a butt of water, stark naked, with a crown of cypress on his head, there to remain till midnight, when he was to step out, and look for a great treasure, which she had made him believe was concealed in a certain part of his house.  When the good cap-maker heard matins ring, he made such haste to get out of the butt, lest he should lose his chance, that it fell with him, bruising his flesh, and deluging the floor with water, in which he fell to swimming with might and main, roaring out that he was drowning.  His wife and his neighbours ran to him with lights, and found him striking out lustily with his legs and arms.  “Help! help!” he cried; “I am suffocating;” and he really was not far from it, such was the effect of his excessive fright.  They seized and rescued him from his deadly peril.  When he had recovered a little, he told them the trick the gipsy woman had played him; and yet for all that, he dug a hole, more than a fathom deep, in the place pointed out to him, in spite of all his neighbours could say; and had he not been forcibly prevented by one of them, when he was beginning to undermine the foundations of the house, he would have brought the whole of it down about his ears.  The story spread all over the city; so that the little boys in the streets used to point their fingers at him, and shout in his ears the story of the gipsy’s trick, and his own credulity.  Such was the tale told by the old gitana, in explanation of her unwillingness to go to Seville.