s in adventures. But remember this! However sore pressed and in
danger I may be when fighting with another knight, you must not offer
to draw your sword to help me. It is against the laws of chivalry for
a squire to attack a knight."

"Never fear me, master," said Sancho. "I'll be sure to obey you; I
have ever loved peace. But if a knight offers to set upon me first,
there is no rule forbidding me to hit him back, is there?"

"None," answered Don Quixote, "only do not help me."

"I will not," said Sancho. "Never trust me if I don't keep that
commandment as well as I do the Sabbath."

IV

HOW DON QUIXOTE WON A HELMET; HOW HE FOUGHT WITH TWO ARMIES; AND HOW
SANCHO'S ASS WAS STOLEN

Many were the adventures that now befell Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
In the very first, wherein he fought with a man from Biscay, whom he
left lying in a pool of blood, Don Quixote lost part of his helmet,
and had the half of one of his ears sliced off by the Biscayan's
sword. The accident to the helmet was a great grief to him, and he
swore an oath that until he had taken from some other knight as good a
helmet as that which was now made useless to him, he would never again
eat his food on a table-cloth.

One day as they rode along a highway between two villages Don Quixote
halted and looked eagerly at something.

"Sancho," said he, "dost thou not see yonder knight that comes riding
this way on a dapple-gray steed, with a helmet of gold on his head?"

"Not a thing can I see," answered Sancho, "but a fellow on just such
another ass as mine, with something that glitters on top of his head."

"Can you not see," asked Don Quixote, "that it is a helmet? Do you
stand back, and let me deal with him. Soon now shall I possess myself
of the helmet that I need."

Now, in those far-away days, when doctors were few, if anybody needed
to be bled for a fever or any other illness (for it was then thought
that "letting blood" was the cure for most illnesses), it was the
custom for the barber to bleed the sick person. For the purpose of
catching the blood that ran from a vein when it had been cut, a brass
dish was carried, a dish with part of it cut away from one side, so
that it might the more easily be held close to the patient's arm or
body. A small dish like this you may sometimes still see hanging as a
sign at the end of a pole outside barbers' shops. Barbers in those
days of old were called barber-surgeons, for the reason that they