The place was all heat and noise.
Presently the soldiers, ending their meal, got up with clamor
and surged from the court to their waiting horses. After
them ran the innkeeper, appealing for pay. Denials, expostulation,
anger and beseeching reached the ears of the patio,
then the sound of horses going down stony ways. "O God
of the poor!" cried the gaunt woman. "How are we
robbed!"
"Why are they not before Granada?" demanded the
lawyer and alertly provided the answer to his own question.
"Take locusts and give them leave to eat, being careful to
say, `This fellow's fields only!' But the locusts have wings
and their nature is to eat!"
The mountain robbers, if robbers they were, dined quietly,
the gaunt woman promptly and painstakingly serving them.
They were going to pay, I was sure, though it might not be
this noon.
The two friars seemed, quiet, simple men, dining as
dumbly as if they sat in Saint Francis's refectory. The
sometime alcalde and the shipmaster were the talkers, the
student sitting as though he were in the desert, eating bread
and cheese and onions and looking on his book. The lawyer
watched all, talked to make them talk, then came in and settled
matters. The alcalde was the politician, knowing the
affairs of the world and speaking familiarly of the King
and the Queen and the Marquis of Cadiz.
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