The knight looked, and was overjoyed, believing that two armies were about to meet and fight in the plain.

“What are we to do, master?” asked Sancho.

“Do!” said Don Quixote, “why, what can we do but help the weaker side?  Look yonder, Sancho, that knight whom thou seest in the gilded armory with a lion crouching at the feet of a lady painted on his shield, that is the valiant Laurcalco.  That other, the giant on his right, Brandabarbaran.”  And he ran over a long list of names of knights whom he believed that he saw.

Sancho listened, as dumb as a fish; but at last he gasped.  “Why, master, you might as well tell me that it snows.  Never a knight, nor a giant, nor a man can I see.”

“How!” answered Don Quixote, “canst thou not hear their horses neigh, and their drums beating?”

“Drums!” said Sancho.  “Not I!  I hear only the bleating of sheep.”

“Since you are afraid,” said the Knight, “stand aside, and I will go by myself to fight.”

With that, he galloped down on to the plain, shouting, leaving Sancho bawling to him, “Hold, sir!  Stop!  For Heaven’s sake come back.  As sure as I’m a sinner, they are only harmless sheep.  Come back, I say.”

But Don Quixote, paying not the least heed, galloped on furiously and charged into the middle of the sheep, spearing them right and left, trampling the living and the dead under “Rozinante’s” feet.  The shepherds, finding that he took no notice of their shouts, now hurled stones at him from their slings, and one big stone presently hit the Knight fair in his ribs and doubled him up in the saddle.

Gasping for breath, with all speed Don Quixote got from his wallet a bottle filled with a mixture he had made, a mixture which he firmly believed to be a certain cure for all wounds.  Of this he took a long gulp, but just at that moment another big stone hit him such a rap on the mouth that the bottle was smashed into a thousand pieces, and half of his teeth were knocked out.

Down dropped the Knight on the ground, and the shepherds thinking that he was killed, ran away, taking with them seven dead sheep which he had slain.

Sancho Panza found his master in a very bad way, with nearly all the teeth gone from one side of his mouth, and with a terrible pain under his ribs.

“Ah! master,” he said, “I told you they were sheep.  Why would not you listen to me?”

“Sheep!  Sancho.  No, no!  There is nothing so easy for a wizard like Freston as to change things from one shape to the other.  I will wager if you now mount your ass and ride over the hill after them, you will find no sheep there, but the knights and squires come back to their own shape, and the armies marching as when we first saw them.”

Now, after this and many other adventures (about which, perhaps, you may some day read for yourself), Don Quixote and Sancho Panza rode away into the mountains, for the Knight was sorely in need of a quiet place in which to rest.