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The first thing he did was to clean up sorandfather, and had been for ages lying forgotten in a corner

eaten with rust and covered with mildew He scoured and polished it as

best he could, but he perceived one great defect in it, that it had no

closed hel but a sienuity supplied, for he contrived a kind of half-helmet of pasteboard

which, fitted on to the morion, looked like a whole one It is true that,

in order to see if it was strong and fit to stand a cut, he drew his

sword and gave it a couple of slashes, the first of which undid in an

instant what had taken him a week to do The ease hich he had

knocked it to pieces disconcerted hier he set to work again, fixing bars of iron on the inside until he

was satisfied with its strength; and then, not caring to try any more

experiments with it, he passed it and adopted it as a helmet of the most

perfect construction

He next proceeded to inspect his hack, which, with more quartos than a

real and more blemishes than the steed of Gonela, that "tantum pellis et

ossa fuit," surpassed in his eyes the Bucephalus of Alexander or the

Babieca of the Cid Four days were spent in thinking what naive

hiht that a horse