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 bled
people, as well as shaved them or cut their hair.

And the truth of the matter was this, that the man whom Don Quixote