 my thoughts, especially when asleep and oppressed by the
nightmare.  This figure was my runaway guide.

_Myself_.—Good day to you, my gentleman.  The weather is hot, and yonder
water appears delicious.  I am almost tempted to dismount and regale
myself with a slight draught.

_Guide_.—Your worship can do no better.  The day is, as you say, hot; you
can do no better than drink a little of this water.  I have myself just
drunk.  I would not, however, advise you to give that pony any; it
appears heated and blown.

_Myself_.—It may well be so.  I have been galloping at least two leagues
in pursuit of a fellow who engaged to guide me to Finisterre, but who
deserted me in a most singular manner; so much so, that I almost believe
him to be a thief, and no true man.  You do not happen to have seen him?

_Guide_.—What kind of a man might he be?

_Myself_.—A short, thick fellow, very much like yourself, with a hump
upon his back, and, excuse me, of a very ill-favoured countenance.

_Guide_.—Ha, ha!  I know him.  He ran with me to this fountain, where he
has just left me.  That man, Sir Cavalier, is no thief.  If he is
anything at all, he is a _Nuveiro_ {12}—a fellow who rides upon the
clouds, and is occasionally whisked away by a gust of wind.  Should you
ever travel with that man again, never allow him more than one glass of
anise at a time, or he will infallibly mount into the clouds and leave
you, and then he will ride and run till he comes to a water-brook, or
knocks his head against a fountain—then one draught, and he is himself
again.  So you are going to Finisterre, Sir Cavalier.  Now it is singular
enough, that a cavalier much of your appearance engaged me to conduct him
there this morning; I, however, lost him on the way; so it appears to me
our best plan to travel together until you find your own guide and I find
my own master.

It might be about two o’clock in the afternoon that we reached a long and
ruinous bridge, seemingly of great antiquity, and which, as I was
informed by my guide, was ca