By this time they had cleared the wood, and saw the three village lasses close at hand. Don Quixote looked all along the road to El Toboso, and as he could see nobody except the three peasant girls, he was completely puzzled, and asked Sancho if it was outside the city he had left them.

“How outside the city?” returned Sancho. “Are your worship’s eyes in the back of your head, that you can’t see that they are these who are coming here, shining like the very sun at noonday?”

“I see nothing, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “but three country girls on three jackasses.”

“Now, may God deliver me from the devil!” said Sancho, “and can it be that your worship takes three hackneys⁠—or whatever they’re called⁠—as white as the driven snow, for jackasses? By the Lord, I could tear my beard if that was the case!”