mills
to me again," said Don Quixote, "or I vow--and I say no more--I'll full
the soul out of you."

Sancho held his peace in dread lest his master should carry out the vow
he had hurled like a bowl at him.

The fact of the matter as regards the helmet, steed, and knight that Don
Quixote saw, was this: In that neighborhood there were two villages, one
of them so small that it had neither apothecary's shop, nor barber,
which the other that was close to it had; so the barber of the larger
served the smaller; and in it there was a sick man who required to be
bled and another man who wanted to be shaved, and on this errand the
barber was going, carrying with him a brass basin; but as luck would
have it, as he was on the way it began to rain, and not to spoil his
hat, which probably was a new one, he put the basin on his head, and
being clean it glittered at half a league's distance. He rode upon a
gray ass, as Sancho said, and this was what made it seem to Don Quixote
to be a dapple-gray steed and a knight and a golden helmet; for
everything he saw he made to fall in with his crazy chivalry and ill
errant notions; and when he saw the poor knight draw near, without
entering into any parley with him, at Rocinante's top speed he bore down
upon him with the pike pointed low, fully determined to run him through
and through, and as he reached him, without checking the fury of his
charge, he cried to him, "Defend thyself, miserable being, or yield me
of thine own accord that which is so reasonably my due."

[Illustration: "DEFEND THYSELF, MISERABLE BEING!"]

The barber, who without any expectation or apprehension of it saw this
apparition coming down upon him, had no other way of saving himself from
the stroke of the lance but to let himself fall off his ass; and no
sooner had he touched the ground than he sprang up more nimbly than a
deer and sped away across the plain faster than the wind.

He left the basin on the ground, with which Don Quixote contented
himself, saying that the pagan had shown his discretion and imitated the
beaver, which finding himself pressed by the hunters bites and cuts off
with its teeth that for which by its natural instinct, it knows it is
pursued.

He told Sancho to pick up the helmet, and he, taking it in his hands,
said, "By God the basin is a good one, and worth a piece of eight[445-3]
if it is worth a maravedi," and handed it to his master, who immediately
put it on his head, turning it rou