ommodation of cattle (the litter being
thrown into the hollow as it is needed, and nought removed till it
reaches the level of the other floor), and above this, about eight feet
from the ground and four from the roof, was a kind of shelf (the breadth
and length of that half), for the storage of fodder and a sleeping-place
for the inhabitants, with no kind of partition, or any issue for the
foul air from the cattle below.

"Are we to live a year in this hutch?" asks Moll, in affright.

"Have done with your chatter, Moll!" answers Jack, testily. "Don't you
see I'm a-thinking? Heaven knows there's enough to swallow without any
bugbears of your raising."

With that, having finished his inspection of the interior, he goes out
and looks at it outside.

"Well," says Don Sanchez, "what think you of the house?"

"Why, Senor, 'tis no worse as I can see than any other in these parts,
and hath this advantage, which they have not, of being in a sweet air.
With a bit of contrivance we could make a shift to live here well
enough. We should not do amiss neither for furniture, seeing that 'tis
the custom of the country to eat off the floor and sit upon nothing. A
pot to cook victuals in is about all we need in that way. But how we are
to get anything to cook in it is one mystery, and" (clacking his tongue)
"what we are going to drink is another, neither of which I can fathom.
For, look you, Senor, if one may judge of men's characters by their
faces or of their means by their habitations, we may dance our legs off
ere ever these Moors will bestow a penny piece upon us, and as for their
sour milk, I'd as lief drink hemlock, and liefer. Now, if this town had
been as we counted on, like Barcelona, all had gone as merry as a
marriage bell, for then might we have gained enough to keep us in
jollity as long as you please; but here, if we die not of the colicks in
a week, 'twill be to perish of starvation in a fortnight. What say you,
Kit?"

I was forced to admit that I had never seen a town less likely to afford
a subsistence than this.

Then Don Sanchez, having heard us with great patience, and waited a
minute to see if we could raise any further objections, answers us in
measured tones.

"I doubt not," says he, "that with a little ingenuity you may make the
house habitable and this wilderness agreeable. My friend, Sidi ben
Ahmed, has offered to provide us with what commodities are necessary to
that end. I agree with you that it wou