"Ah! master," he said, "I told you they were sheep. Why would not you
listen to me?"

"Sheep! Sancho. No, no! There is nothing so easy for a wizard like
Freston as to change things from one shape to the other. I will wager
if you now mount your ass and ride over the hill after them, you will
find no sheep there, but the knights and squires come back to their
own shape, and the armies marching as when we first saw them."

Now, after this and many other adventures (about which, perhaps, you
may some day read for yourself), Don Quixote and Sancho Panza rode
away into the mountains, for the Knight was sorely in need of a quiet
place in which to rest.

So weary were he and his squire, that one night, when they had ridden
into a wood, and it chanced that the horse and the ass stood still,
both Don Quixote and Sancho Panza fell sound asleep without even
getting out of their saddles. There sat the Knight, leaning on his
lance; and Sancho, doubled over the pommel, snored as loud as if he
had been in a four-post feather bed.

It happened that a wandering thief saw them as he passed.

"Now," thought he, "I want something to ride upon, for I'm tired of
walking in these abominable mountains. Here's a chance of a good ass.
But how am I to get it, without waking its master?"

Very quietly he cut four long sticks. One after the other he placed
these under each side of Sancho's saddle; then loosening the girths,
he gradually raised the sticks till the saddle was clear of the