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:
 
"Although I am but a poor hand myself at reading writing, I would swear that we hold in our hands the discharge of some soldier of Mohammed who is now in the bottomless pit."
 
"You say that on account of the tube."
 
"On account of the tube I say it."
 
"Well, then, you are altogether wrong, my dear Torcuata, for such a thing as conscription was not known among the Moors, nor is this a discharge. This is a—a—"
 
Uncle Hormiga glanced around him cautiously, lowered his voice, and said with air of absolute certainty:
 
"This paper contains directions where to find a treasure!"
 
"You are right!" cried his wife, suddenly inspired with the same belief; "and have you already found it? Is it very big? Did you cover it up carefully again? Are the coins gold or silver? Do you think they will pass current now? What a happiness for our boys! How they will spend money and enjoy themselves in Granada and Madrid! I want to have a look at it. Let us go there. There is a moon to-night!"
 
"Silly woman! Be quiet! How do you suppose that I could find the treasure by these directions, when I don't know how to read, either in Moorish or in Christian?"
 
"That's true! Well, then, I'll tell you what to do. As soon as it is daylight, saddle a good mule, cross the Sierra through the Puerto de la Laguna, which they say is safe now, and go to Ugijar, to the house of our gossip, Don Matias Quesada. who knows something of everything. He will explain what is in the paper and give you good advice, as he always does."
 
&quo............