And thus they would argue until one or the other of the consorts fell
asleep.


II.

One evening Uncle Hormiga returned from his work every thoughtful and
preoccupied, and earlier than usual.

His wife waited until after he had dismissed the laborers to ask him what
was the matter, when he responded by showing her a leaden tube with a
cover, somewhat like the tube in which a soldier on furlough keeps his
leave, from which he drew a yellow parchment covered with crabbed
handwriting, and carefully unrolling it said, with imposing gravity:

"I don't know how to read, even in Spanish, which is the easiest language
in the world, but the devil take me if this was not written by a Moor."

"That is to say that you found it in the tower?"

"I don't say it on that account alone, but because these spider's legs
don't look like anything I ever saw written by a Christian."

The wife of Juan Gomez looked at the parchment, smelled it, and exclaimed,
with a confidence as amusing as it was ill-founded:

"By a Moor it was written!"

After a while she added, with a melancholy air: