had
lived there for many years past.

At this answer the wife grew very angry. She began to cry, and made such
a noise that all the neighbours heard her and put their heads out of the
windows, to see what was the matter. 'It was absurd,' she sobbed out,
'quite unjust. Indeed, if you came to think of it, the gift was worth
nothing, as when her husband made it he was a bachelor, and since then
he had been married, and she had never given her consent to any such
thing.' And so she lamented all day and all night, till the poor man
was nearly worried to death; and at last he did what she wished, and
summoned his brother in a court of law to give up the houses which, he
said, had only been lent to him. But when the evidence on both sides had
been heard, the judge decided in favour of the poor man, which made the
rich lady more furious than ever, and she determined not to rest until
she had gained the day. If one judge would not give her the houses
another should, and so time after time the case was tried over again,
till at last it came before the highest judge of all, in the city of
Evora. Her husband was heartily tired and ashamed of the whole affair,
but his weakness in not putting a stop to it in the beginning had got
him into this difficulty, and now he was forced to go on.

On the same day the two brothers set out on their journey to the city,
the rich one on horseback, with plenty of food in his knapsack, the poor
one on foot with nothing but a piece of bread and four onions to eat
on the way. The road was hilly and neither could go very fast, and when
night fell, they were both glad to see some lights in a window a little
distance in front of them.

The lights turned out to have been placed there by a farmer, who
had planned to have a particularly good supper as it was his wife's
birthday, and bade the rich man enter and sit down, while he himself
took the horse to the stable. The poor man asked timidly if he might
spend the night in a corner, adding that he had brought his own supper
with him. Another time permission might have been refused him, for the
farmer was no lover of humble folk, but now he gave the elder brother
leave to come in, pointing out a wooden chair where he could sit.

Supper was soon served, and very glad the younger brother was to eat it,
for his long ride had made him very hungry. The farmer's wife, however,
would touch nothing, and at last declared that the only supper she
wanted was one of