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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Don Rodriguez
+by Lord Dunsany
+(#2 in our series by Lord Dunsany)
+
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+Title: Don Rodriguez
+
+Author: Lord Dunsany
+
+Release Date: July, 2003  [Etext #4282]
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+[This file was first posted on December 30, 2001]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Don Rodriguez
+by Lord Dunsany
+******This file should be named drodr10.txt or drodr10.zip******
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+Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+DON RODRIGUEZ
+
+CHRONICLES OF SHADOW VALLEY
+
+By LORD DUNSANY
+
+To WILLIAM BEEBE
+
+
+
+
+
+CHRONOLOGY
+
+After long and patient research I am still unable to give to the
+reader of these Chronicles the exact date of the times that they
+tell of. Were it merely a matter of history there could be no
+doubts about the period; but where magic is concerned, to however
+slight an extent, there must always be some element of mystery,
+arising partly out of ignorance and partly from the compulsion of
+those oaths by which magic protects its precincts from the tiptoe
+of curiosity.
+
+Moreover, magic, even in small quantities, appears to affect time,
+much as acids affect some metals, curiously changing its
+substance, until dates seem to melt into a mercurial form that
+renders them elusive even to the eye of the most watchful
+historian.
+
+It is the magic appearing in Chronicles III and IV that has
+gravely affected the date, so that all I can tell the reader with
+certainty of the period is that it fell in the later years of the
+Golden Age in Spain.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE FIRST CHRONICLE
+HOW HE MET AND SAID FAREWELL TO MINE HOST
+OF THE DRAGON AND KNIGHT
+
+THE SECOND CHRONICLE
+HOW HE HIRED A MEMORABLE SERVANT
+
+THE THIRD CHRONICLE
+HOW HE CAME TO THE HOUSE OF WONDER
+
+THE FOURTH CHRONICLE
+HOW HE CAME TO THE MOUNTAINS OF THE SUN
+
+THE FIFTH CHRONICLE
+HOW HE RODE IN THE TWILIGHT AND SAW SERAFINA
+
+THE SIXTH CHRONICLE
+HOW HE SANG TO HIS MANDOLIN AND WHAT CAME OF HIS SINGING
+
+THE SEVENTH CHRONICLE
+HOW HE CAME TO SHADOW VALLEY
+
+THE EIGHTH CHRONICLE
+HOW HE TRAVELLED FAR
+
+THE NINTH CHRONICLE
+HOW HE WON A CASTLE IN SPAIN
+
+THE TENTH CHRONICLE
+HOW HE CAME BACK TO LOWLIGHT
+
+THE ELEVENTH CHRONICLE
+HOW HE TURNED TO GARDENING AND HIS SWORD RESTED
+
+THE TWELFTH CHRONICLE
+THE BUILDING OF CASTLE RODRIGUEZ AND THE ENDING OF THESE CHRONICLES
+
+
+
+
+
+DON RODRIGUEZ
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FIRST CHRONICLE
+
+HOW HE MET AND SAID FAREWELL TO MINE HOST OF THE DRAGON AND KNIGHT
+
+
+Being convinced that his end was nearly come, and having lived
+long on earth (and all those years in Spain, in the golden time),
+the Lord of the Valleys of Arguento Harez, whose heights see not
+Valladolid, called for his eldest son. And so he addressed him
+when he was come to his chamber, dim with its strange red hangings
+and august with the splendour of Spain: "O eldest son of mine,
+your younger brother being dull and clever, on whom those traits
+that women love have not been bestowed by God; and know my eldest
+son that here on earth, and for ought I know Hereafter, but
+certainly here on earth, these women be the arbiters of all
+things; and how this be so God knoweth only, for they are vain and
+variable, yet it is surely so: your younger brother then not
+having been given those ways that women prize, and God knows why
+they prize them for they are vain ways that I have in my mind and
+that won me the Valleys of Arguento Harez, from whose heights
+Angelico swore he saw Valladolid once, and that won me moreover
+also ... but that is long ago and is all gone now ... ah well,
+well ... what was I saying?" And being reminded of his discourse,
+the old lord continued, saying, "For himself he will win nothing,
+and therefore I will leave him these my valleys, for not unlikely
+it was for some sin of mine that his spirit was visited with
+dullness, as Holy Writ sets forth, the sins of the fathers being
+visited on the children; and thus I make him amends. But to you I
+leave my long, most flexible, ancient Castilian blade, which
+infidels dreaded if old songs be true. Merry and lithe it is, and
+its true temper singeth when it meets another blade as two friends
+sing when met after many years. It is most subtle, nimble and
+exultant; and what it will not win for you in the wars, that shall
+be won for you by your mandolin, for you have a way with it that
+goes well with the old airs of Spain. And choose, my son, rather a
+moonlight night when you sing under those curved balconies that I
+knew, ah me, so well; for there is much advantage in the moon. In
+the first place maidens see in the light of the moon, especially
+in the Spring, more romance than you might credit, for it adds for
+them a mystery to the darkness which the night has not when it is
+merely black. And if any statue should gleam on the grass near by,
+or if the magnolia be in blossom, or even the nightingale singing,
+or if anything be beautiful in the night, in any of these things
+also there is advantage; for a maiden will attribute to her lover
+all manner of things that are not his at all, but are only
+outpourings from the hand of God. There is this advantage also in
+the moon, that, if interrupters come, the moonlight is better
+suited to the play of a blade than the mere darkness of night;
+indeed but the merry play of my sword in the moonlight was often a
+joy to see, it so flashed, so danced, so sparkled. In the
+moonlight also one makes no unworthy stroke, but hath scope for
+those fair passes that Sevastiani taught, which were long ago the
+wonder of Madrid."
+
+The old lord paused, and breathed for a little space, as it were
+gathering breath for his last words to his son. He breathed
+deliberately, then spoke again. "I leave you," he said, "well
+content that you have the two accomplishments, my son, that are
+most needful in a Christian man, skill with the sword and a way
+with the mandolin. There be other arts indeed among the heathen,
+for the world is wide and hath full many customs, but these two
+alone are needful." And then with that grand manner that they had
+at that time in Spain, although his strength was failing, he gave
+to his eldest son his Castilian sword. He lay back then in the
+huge, carved, canopied bed; his eyes closed, the red silk curtains
+rustled, and there was no sound of his breathing. But the old
+lord's spirit, whatever journey it purposed, lingered yet in its
+ancient habitation, and his voice came again, but feebly now and
+rambling; he muttered awhile of gardens, such gardens no doubt as
+the hidalgos guarded in that fertile region of sunshine in the
+proudest period of Spain; he would have known no others. So for
+awhile his memory seemed to stray, half blind among those perfumed
+earthly wonders; perhaps among these memories his spirit halted,
+and tarried those last few moments, mistaking those Spanish
+gardens, remembered by moonlight in Spring, for the other end of
+his journey, the glades of Paradise. However it be, it tarried.
+These rambling memories ceased and silence fell again, with
+scarcely the sound of breathing. Then gathering up his strength
+for the last time and looking at his son, "The sword to the wars,"
+he said. "The mandolin to the balconies." With that he fell back
+dead.
+
+Now there were no wars at that time so far as was known in Spain,
+but that old lord's eldest son, regarding those last words of his
+father as a commandment, determined then and there in that dim,
+vast chamber to gird his legacy to him and seek for the wars,
+wherever the wars might be, so soon as the obsequies of the
+sepulture were ended. And of those obsequies I tell not here, for
+they are fully told in the Black Books of Spain, and the deeds of
+that old lord's youth are told in the Golden Stories. The Book of
+Maidens mentions him, and again we read of him in Gardens of
+Spain. I take my leave of him, happy, I trust, in Paradise, for he
+had himself the accomplishments that he held needful in a
+Christian, skill with the sword and a way with the mandolin; and
+if there be some harder, better way to salvation than to follow
+that which we believe to be good, then are we all damned. So he
+was buried, and his eldest son fared forth with his legacy
+dangling from his girdle in its long, straight, lovely scabbard,
+blue velvet, with emeralds on it, fared forth on foot along a road
+of Spain. And though the road turned left and right and sometimes
+nearly ceased, as though to let the small wild flowers grow, out
+of sheer good will such as some roads never have; though it ran
+west and east and sometimes south, yet in the main it ran
+northward, though wandered is a better word than ran, and the Lord
+of the Valleys of Arguento Harez who owned no valleys, or anything
+but a sword, kept company with it looking for the wars. Upon his
+back he had slung his mandolin. Now the time of the year was
+Spring, not Spring as we know it in England, for it was but early
+March, but it was the time when Spring coming up out of Africa, or
+unknown lands to the south, first touches Spain, and multitudes of
+anemones come forth at her feet.
+
+Thence she comes north to our islands, no less wonderful in our
+woods than in Andalusian valleys, fresh as a new song, fabulous as
+a rune, but a little pale through travel, so that our flowers do
+not quite flare forth with all the myriad blaze of the flowers of
+Spain.
+
+And all the way as he went the young man looked at the flame of
+those southern flowers, flashing on either side of him all the
+way, as though the rainbow had been broken in Heaven and its
+fragments fallen on Spain. All the way as he went he gazed at
+those flowers, the first anemones of the year; and long after,
+whenever he sang to old airs of Spain, he thought of Spain as it
+appeared that day in all the wonder of Spring; the memory lent a
+beauty to his voice and a wistfulness to his eyes that accorded
+not ill with the theme of the songs he sang, and were more than
+once to melt proud hearts deemed cold. And so gazing he came to a
+town that stood on a hill, before he was yet tired, though he had
+done nigh twenty of those flowery miles of Spain; and since it was
+evening and the light was fading away, he went to an inn and drew
+his sword in the twilight and knocked with the hilt of it on the
+oaken door. The name of it was the Inn of the Dragon and Knight. A
+light was lit in one of the upper windows, the darkness seemed to
+deepen at that moment, a step was heard coming heavily down a
+stairway; and having named the inn to you, gentle reader, it is
+time for me to name the young man also, the landless lord of the
+Valleys of Arguento Harez, as the step comes slowly down the inner
+stairway, as the gloaming darkens over the first house in which he
+has ever sought shelter so far from his father's valleys, as he
+stands upon the threshold of romance. He was named Rodriguez
+Trinidad Fernandez, Concepcion Henrique Maria; but we shall
+briefly name him Rodriguez in this story; you and I, reader, will
+know whom we mean; there is no need therefore to give him his full
+names, unless I do it here and there to remind you.
+
+The steps came thumping on down the inner stairway, different
+windows took the light of the candle, and none other shone in the
+house; it was clear that it was moving with the steps all down
+that echoing stairway. The sound of the steps ceased to
+reverberate upon the wood, and now they slowly moved over stone
+flags; Rodriguez now heard breathing, one breath with every step,
+and at length the sound of bolts and chains undone and the
+breathing now very close. The door was opened swiftly; a man with
+mean eyes, and expression devoted to evil, stood watching him for
+an instant; then the door slammed to again, the bolts were heard
+going back again to their places, the steps and the breathing
+moved away over the stone floor, and the inner stairway began
+again to echo.
+
+"If the wars are here," said Rodriguez to himself and his sword,
+"good, and I sleep under the stars." And he listened in the street
+for the sound of war and, hearing none, continued his discourse.
+"But if I have not come as yet to the wars I sleep beneath a
+roof."
+
+For the second time therefore he drew his sword, and began to
+strike methodically at the door, noting the grain in the wood and
+hitting where it was softest. Scarcely had he got a good strip of
+the oak to look like coming away, when the steps once more
+descended the wooden stair and came lumbering over the stones;
+both the steps and the breathing were quicker, for mine host of
+the Dragon and Knight was hurrying to save his door.
+
+When he heard the sound of the bolts and chains again Rodriguez
+ceased to beat upon the door: once more it opened swiftly, and he
+saw mine host before him, eyeing him with those bad eyes; of too
+much girth, you might have said, to be nimble, yet somehow
+suggesting to the swift intuition of youth, as Rodriguez looked at
+him standing upon his door-step, the spirit and shape of a
+spider, who despite her ungainly build is agile enough in her way.
+
+Mine host said nothing; and Rodriguez, who seldom concerned
+himself with the past, holding that the future is all we can order
+the scheme of (and maybe even here he was wrong), made no mention
+of bolts or door and merely demanded a bed for himself for the
+night.
+
+Mine host rubbed his chin; he had neither beard nor moustache but
+wore hideous whiskers; he rubbed it thoughtfully and looked at
+Rodriguez. Yes, he said, he could have a bed for the night. No
+more words he said, but turned and led the way; while Rodriguez,
+who could sing to the mandolin, wasted none of his words on this
+discourteous object. They ascended the short oak stairway down
+which mine host had come, the great timbers of which were gnawed
+by a myriad rats, and they went by passages with the light of one
+candle into the interior of the inn, which went back farther from
+the street than the young man had supposed; indeed he perceived
+when they came to the great corridor at the end of which was his
+appointed chamber, that here was no ordinary inn, as it had
+appeared from outside, but that it penetrated into the fastness of
+some great family of former times which had fallen on evil days.
+The vast size of it, the noble design where the rats had spared
+the carving, what the moths had left of the tapestries, all
+testified to that; and, as for the evil days, they hung about the
+place, evident even by the light of one candle guttering with
+every draught that blew from the haunts of the rats, an
+inseparable heirloom for all who disturbed those corridors.
+
+And so they came to the chamber.
+
+Mine host entered, bowed without grace in the doorway, and
+extended his left hand, pointing into the room. The draughts that
+blew from the rat-holes in the wainscot, or the mere action of
+entering, beat down the flame of the squat, guttering candle so
+that the chamber remained dim for a moment, in spite of the
+candle, as would naturally be the case. Yet the impression made
+upon Rodriguez was as of some old darkness that had been long
+undisturbed and that yielded reluctantly to that candle's
+intrusion, a darkness that properly became the place and was a
+part of it and had long been so, in the face of which the candle
+appeared an ephemeral thing devoid of grace or dignity or
+tradition. And indeed there was room for darkness in that chamber,
+for the walls went up and up into such an altitude that you could
+scarcely see the ceiling, at which mine host's eyes glanced, and
+Rodriguez followed his look.
+
+He accepted his accommodation with a nod; as indeed he would have
+accepted any room in that inn, for the young are swift judges of
+character, and one who had accepted such a host was unlikely to
+find fault with rats or the profusion of giant cobwebs, dark with
+the dust of years, that added so much to the dimness of that
+sinister inn. They turned now and went back, in the wake of that
+guttering candle, till they came again to the humbler part of the
+building. Here mine host, pushing open a door of blackened oak,
+indicated his dining-chamber. There a long table stood, and on it
+parts of the head and hams of a boar; and at the far end of the
+table a plump and sturdy man was seated in shirt-sleeves feasting
+himself on the boar's meat. He leaped up at once from his chair as
+soon as his master entered, for he was the servant at the Dragon
+and Knight; mine host may have said much to him with a flash of
+his eyes, but he said no more with his tongue than the one word,
+"Dog": he then bowed himself out, leaving Rodriguez to take the
+only chair and to be waited upon by its recent possessor. The
+boar's meat was cold and gnarled, another piece of meat stood on a
+plate on a shelf and a loaf of bread near by, but the rats had had
+most of the bread: Rodriguez demanded what the meat was.
+"Unicorn's tongue," said the servant, and Rodriguez bade him set
+the dish before him, and he set to well content, though I fear the
+unicorn's tongue was only horse: it was a credulous age, as all
+ages are. At the same time he pointed to a three-legged stool that
+he perceived in a corner of the room, then to the table, then to
+the boar's meat, and lastly at the servant, who perceived that he
+was permitted to return to his feast, to which he ran with
+alacrity. "Your name?" said Rodriguez as soon as both were eating.
+"Morano," replied the servant, though it must not be supposed that
+when answering Rodriguez he spoke as curtly as this; I merely give
+the reader the gist of his answer, for he added Spanish words that
+correspond in our depraved and decadent language of to-day to such
+words as "top dog," "nut" and "boss," so that his speech had a
+certain grace about it in that far-away time in Spain.
+
+I have said that Rodriguez seldom concerned himself with the past,
+but considered chiefly the future: it was of the future that he
+was thinking now as he asked Morano this question:
+
+"Why did my worthy and entirely excellent host shut his door in my
+face?"
+
+"Did he so?" said Morano.
+
+"He then bolted it and found it necessary to put the chains back,
+doubtless for some good reason."
+
+"Yes," said Morano thoughtfully, and looking at Rodriguez, "and so
+he might. He must have liked you."
+
+Verily Rodriguez was just the young man to send out with a sword
+and a mandolin into the wide world, for he had much shrewd sense.
+He never pressed a point, but when something had been said that
+might mean much he preferred to store it, as it were, in his mind
+and pass on to other things, somewhat as one might kill game and
+pass on and kill more and bring it all home, while a savage would
+cook the first kill where it fell and eat it on the spot. Pardon
+me, reader, but at Morano's remark you may perhaps have exclaimed,
+"That is not the way to treat one you like." Not so did Rodriguez.
+His attention passed on to notice Morano's rings which he wore in
+great profusion upon his little fingers; they were gold and of
+exquisite work and had once held precious stones, as large gaps
+testified; in these days they would have been priceless, but in an
+age when workers only worked at arts that they understood, and
+then worked for the joy of it, before the word artistic became
+ridiculous, exquisite work went without saying; and as the rings
+were slender they were of little value. Rodriguez made no comment
+upon the rings; it was enough for him to have noticed them. He
+merely noted that they were not ladies' rings, for no lady's ring
+would have fitted on to any one of those fingers: the rings
+therefore of gallants: and not given to Morano by their owners,
+for whoever wore precious stone needed a ring to wear it in, and
+rings did not wear out like hose, which a gallant might give to a
+servant. Nor, thought he, had Morano stolen them, for whoever
+stole them would keep them whole, or part with them whole and get
+a better price. Besides Morano had an honest face, or a face at
+least that seemed honest in such an inn: and while these thoughts
+were passing through his mind Morano spoke again: "Good hams,"
+said Morano. He had already eaten one and was starting upon the
+next. Perhaps he spoke out of gratitude for the honour and
+physical advantage of being permitted to sit there and eat those
+hams, perhaps tentatively, to find out whether he might consume
+the second, perhaps merely to start a conversation, being
+attracted by the honest looks of Rodriguez.
+
+"You are hungry," said Rodriguez.
+
+"Praise God I am always hungry," answered Morano. "If I were not
+hungry I should starve."
+
+"Is it so?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"You see," said Morano, "the manner of it is this: my master gives
+me no food, and it is only when I am hungry that I dare to rob him
+by breaking in, as you saw me, upon his viands; were I not hungry
+I should not dare to do so, and so ..." He made a sad and
+expressive movement with both his hands suggestive of autumn
+leaves blown hence to die.
+
+"He gives you no food?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"It is the way of many men with their dog," said Morano. "They
+give him no food," and then he rubbed his hands cheerfully, "and
+yet the dog does not die."
+
+"And he gives you no wages?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"Just these rings."
+
+Now Rodriguez had himself a ring upon his finger (as a gallant
+should), a slender piece of gold with four tiny angels holding a
+sapphire, and for a moment he pictured the sapphire passing into
+the hands of mine host and the ring of gold and the four small
+angels being flung to Morano; the thought darkened his gaiety for
+no longer than one of those fleecy clouds in Spring shadows the
+fields of Spain.
+
+Morano was also looking at the ring; he had followed the young
+man's glance.
+
+"Master," he said, "do you draw your sword of a night?"
+
+"And you?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"I have no sword," said Morano. "I am but as dog's meat that needs
+no guarding, but you whose meat is rare like the flesh of the
+unicorn need a sword to guard your meat. The unicorn has his horn
+always, and even then he sometimes sleeps."
+
+"It is bad, you think, to sleep," Rodriguez said.
+
+"For some it is very bad, master. They say they never take the
+unicorn waking. For me I am but dog's meat: when I have eaten hams
+I curl up and sleep; but then you see, master, I know I shall wake
+in the morning."
+
+"Ah," said Rodriguez, "the morning's a pleasant time," and he
+leaned back comfortably in his chair. Morano took one shrewd look
+at him, and was soon asleep upon his three-legged stool.
+
+The door opened after a while and mine host appeared. "It is
+late," he said. Rodriguez smiled acquiescently and mine host
+withdrew, and presently leaving Morano whom his master's voice had
+waked, to curl up on the floor in a corner, Rodriguez took the
+candle that lit the room and passed once more through the passages
+of the inn and down the great corridor of the fastness of the
+family that had fallen on evil days, and so came to his chamber. I
+will not waste a multitude of words over that chamber; if you have
+no picture of it in your mind already, my reader, you are reading
+an unskilled writer, and if in that picture it appear a wholesome
+room, tidy and well kept up, if it appear a place in which a
+stranger might sleep without some faint foreboding of disaster,
+then I am wasting your time, and will waste no more of it with
+bits of "descriptive writing" about that dim, high room, whose
+blackness towered before Rodriguez in the night. He entered and
+shut the door, as many had done before him; but for all his youth
+he took some wiser precautions than had they, perhaps, who closed
+that door before. For first he drew his sword; then for some while
+he stood quite still near the door and listened to the rats; then
+he looked round the chamber and perceived only one door; then he
+looked at the heavy oak furniture, carved by some artist, gnawed
+by rats, and all blackened by time; then swiftly opened the door
+of the largest cupboard and thrust his sword in to see who might
+be inside, but the carved satyr's heads at the top of the cupboard
+eyed him silently and nothing moved. Then he noted that though
+there was no bolt on the door the furniture might be placed across
+to make what in the wars is called a barricado, but the wiser
+thought came at once that this was too easily done, and that if
+the danger that the dim room seemed gloomily to forebode were to
+come from a door so readily barricadoed, then those must have been
+simple gallants who parted so easily with the rings that adorned
+Morano's two little fingers. No, it was something more subtle than
+any attack through that door that brought his regular wages to
+Morano. Rodriguez looked at the window, which let in the light of
+a moon that was getting low, for the curtains had years ago been
+eaten up by the moths; but the window was barred with iron bars
+that were not yet rusted away, and looked out, thus guarded, over
+a sheer wall that even in the moonlight fell into blackness.
+Rodriguez then looked round for some hidden door, the sword all
+the while in his hand, and very soon he knew that room fairly
+well, but not its secret, nor why those unknown gallants had given
+up their rings.
+
+It is much to know of an unknown danger that it really is unknown.
+Many have met their deaths through looking for danger from one
+particular direction, whereas had they perceived that they were
+ignorant of its direction they would have been wise in their
+ignorance. Rodriguez had the great discretion to understand
+clearly that he did not know the direction from which danger would
+come. He accepted this as his only discovery about that portentous
+room which seemed to beckon to him with every shadow and to sigh
+over him with every mournful draught, and to whisper to him
+unintelligible warnings with every rustle of tattered silk that
+hung about his bed. And as soon as he discovered that this was his
+only knowledge he began at once to make his preparations: he was a
+right young man for the wars. He divested himself of his shoes and
+doublet and the light cloak that hung from his shoulder and cast
+the clothes on a chair. Over the back of the chair he slung his
+girdle and the scabbard hanging therefrom and placed his plumed
+hat so that none could see that his Castilian blade was not in its
+resting-place. And when the sombre chamber had the appearance of
+one having undressed in it before retiring Rodriguez turned his
+attention to the bed, which he noticed to be of great depth and
+softness. That something not unlike blood had been spilt on the
+floor excited no wonder in Rodriguez; that vast chamber was
+evidently, as I have said, in the fortress of some great family,
+against one of whose walls the humble inn had once leaned for
+protection; the great family were gone: how they were gone
+Rodriguez did not know, but it excited no wonder in him to see
+blood on the boards: besides, two gallants may have disagreed; or
+one who loved not dumb animals might have been killing rats. Blood
+did not disturb him; but what amazed him, and would have surprised
+anyone who stood in that ruinous room, was that there were clean
+new sheets on the bed. Had you seen the state of the furniture and
+the floor, O my reader, and the vastness of the old cobwebs and
+the black dust that they held, the dead spiders and huge dead
+flies, and the living generation of spiders descending and
+ascending through the gloom, I say that you also would have been
+surprised at the sight of those nice clean sheets. Rodriguez noted
+the fact and continued his preparations. He took the bolster from
+underneath the pillow and laid it down the middle of the bed and
+put the sheets back over it; then he stood back and looked at it,
+much as a sculptor might stand back from his marble, then he
+returned to it and bent it a little in the middle, and after that
+he placed his mandolin on the pillow and nearly covered it with
+the sheet, but not quite, for a little of the curved dark-brown
+wood remained still to be seen. It looked wonderfully now like a
+sleeper in the bed, but Rodriguez was not satisfied with his work
+until he had placed his kerchief and one of his shoes where a
+shoulder ought to be; then he stood back once more and eyed it
+with satisfaction. Next he considered the light. He looked at the
+light of the moon and remembered his father's advice, as the young
+often do, but considered that this was not the occasion for it,
+and decided to leave the light of his candle instead, so that
+anyone who might be familiar with the moonlight in that shadowy
+chamber should find instead a less sinister light. He therefore
+dragged a table to the bedside, placed the candle upon it, and
+opened a treasured book that he bore in his doublet, and laid it
+on the bed near by, between the candle and his mandolin-headed
+sleeper; the name of the book was Notes in a Cathedral and dealt
+with the confessions of a young girl, which the author claimed to
+have jotted down, while concealed behind a pillow near the
+Confessional, every Sunday for the entire period of Lent. Lastly
+he pulled a sheet a little loose from the bed, until a corner of
+it lay on the floor; then he lay down on the boards, still keeping
+his sword in his hand, and by means of the sheet and some silk
+that hung from the bed, he concealed himself sufficient for his
+purpose, which was to see before he should be seen by any intruder
+that might enter that chamber.
+
+And if Rodriguez appear to have been unduly suspicious, it should
+be borne in mind not only that those empty rings needed much
+explanation, but that every house suggests to the stranger
+something; and that whereas one house seems to promise a welcome
+in front of cosy fires, another good fare, another joyous wine,
+this inn seemed to promise murder; or so the young man's intuition
+said, and the young are wise to trust to their intuitions.
+
+The reader will know, if he be one of us, who have been to the
+wars and slept in curious ways, that it is hard to sleep when
+sober upon a floor; it is not like the earth, or snow, or a
+feather bed; even rock can be more accommodating; it is hard,
+unyielding and level, all night unmistakable floor. Yet Rodriguez
+took no risk of falling asleep, so he said over to himself in his
+mind as much as he remembered of his treasured book, Notes in a
+Cathedral, which he always read to himself before going to rest
+and now so sadly missed. It told how a lady who had listened to a
+lover longer than her soul's safety could warrant, as he played
+languorous music in the moonlight and sang soft by her low
+balcony, and how she being truly penitent, had gathered many
+roses, the emblems of love (as surely, she said at confession, all
+the world knows), and when her lover came again by moonlight had
+cast them all from her from the balcony, showing that she had
+renounced love; and her lover had entirely misunderstood her. It
+told how she often tried to show him this again, and all the
+misunderstandings are sweetly set forth and with true Christian
+penitence. Sometimes some little matter escaped Rodriguez's memory
+and then he longed to rise up and look at his dear book, yet he
+lay still where he was: and all the while he listened to the rats,
+and the rats went on gnawing and running regularly, scared by
+nothing new; Rodriguez trusted as much to their myriad ears as to
+his own two. The great spiders descended out of such heights that
+you could not see whence they came, and ascended again into
+blackness; it was a chamber of prodigious height. Sometimes the
+shadow of a descending spider that had come close to the candle
+assumed a frightening size, but Rodriguez gave little thought to
+it; it was of murder he was thinking, not of shadows; still, in
+its way it was ominous, and reminded Rodriguez horribly of his
+host; but what of an omen, again, in a chamber full of omens. The
+place itself was ominous; spiders could scarce make it more so.
+The spider itself was big enough, he thought, to be impaled on his
+Castilian blade; indeed, he would have done it but that he thought
+it wiser to stay where he was and watch. And then the spider found
+the candle too hot and climbed in a hurry all the way to the
+ceiling, and his horrible shadow grew less and dwindled away.
+
+It was not that the rats were frightened: whatever it was that
+happened happened too quietly for that, but the volume of the
+sound of their running had suddenly increased: it was not like
+fear among them, for the running was no swifter, and it did not
+fade away; it was as though the sound of rats running, which had
+not been heard before, was suddenly heard now. Rodriguez looked at
+the door, the door was shut. A young Englishman would long ago
+have been afraid that he was making a fuss over nothing and would
+have gone to sleep in the bed, and not seen what Rodriguez saw. He
+might have thought that hearing more rats all at once was merely a
+fancy, and that everything was all right. Rodriguez saw a rope
+coming slowly down from the ceiling, he quickly determined whether
+it was a rope or only the shadow of some huge spider's thread, and
+then he watched it and saw it come down right over his bed and
+stop within a few feet of it. Rodriguez looked up cautiously to
+see who had sent him that strange addition to the portents that
+troubled the chamber, but the ceiling was too high and dim for him
+to perceive anything but the rope coming down out of the darkness.
+Yet he surmised that the ceiling must have softly opened, without
+any sound at all, at the moment that he heard the greater number
+of rats. He waited then to see what the rope would do; and at
+first it hung as still as the great festoons dead spiders had made
+in the corners; then as he watched it it began to sway. He looked
+up into the dimness then to see who was swaying the rope; and for
+a long time, as it seemed to him lying gripping his Castilian
+sword on the floor he saw nothing clearly. And then he saw mine
+host coming down the rope, hand over hand quite nimbly, as though
+he lived by this business. In his right hand he held a poniard of
+exceptional length, yet he managed to clutch the rope and hold the
+poniard all the time with the same hand.
+
+If there had been something hideous about the shadow of the spider
+that came down from that height the shadow of mine host was indeed
+demoniac. He too was like a spider, with his body at no time
+slender all bunched up on the rope, and his shadow was six times
+his size: you could turn from the spider's shadow to the spider
+and see that it was for the most part a fancy of the candle half
+crazed by the draughts, but to turn from mine host's shadow to
+himself and to see his wicked eyes was to say that the candle's
+wildest fears were true. So he climbed down his rope holding his
+poniard upward. But when he came within perhaps ten feet of the
+bed he pointed it downward and began to sway about. It will be
+readily seen that by swaying his rope at a height mine host could
+drop on any part of the bed. Rodriguez as he watched him saw him
+scrutinise closely and continue to sway on his rope. He feared
+that mine host was ill satisfied with the look of the mandolin and
+that he would climb away again, well warned of his guest's
+astuteness, into the heights of the ceiling to devise some
+fearfuller scheme; but he was only looking for the shoulder. And
+then mine host dropped; poniard first, he went down with all his
+weight behind it and drove it through the bolster below where the
+shoulder should be, just where we slant our arms across our
+bodies, when we lie asleep on our sides, leaving the ribs exposed:
+and the soft bed received him. And the moment that mine host let
+go of his rope Rodriguez leaped to his feet. He saw Rodriguez,
+indeed their eyes met as he dropped through the air, but what
+could mine host do? He was already committed to his stroke, and
+his poniard was already deep in the mattress when the good
+Castilian blade passed through his ribs.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SECOND CHRONICLE
+
+HOW HE HIRED A MEMORABLE SERVANT
+
+
+When Rodriguez woke, the birds were singing gloriously. The sun
+was up and the air was sparkling over Spain. The gloom had left
+his high chamber, and much of the menace had gone from it that
+overnight had seemed to bode in the corners. It had not become
+suddenly tidy; it was still more suitable for spiders than men, it
+still mourned and brooded over the great family that it had nursed
+and that evil days had so obviously overtaken; but it no longer
+had the air of finger to lips, no longer seemed to share a secret
+with you, and that secret Murder. The rats still ran round the
+wainscot, but the song of the birds and the jolly, dazzling
+sunshine were so much larger than the sombre room that the young
+man's thoughts escaped from it and ran free to the fields. It may
+have been only his fancy but the world seemed somehow brighter for
+the demise of mine host of the Dragon and Knight, whose body still
+lay hunched up on the foot of his bed. Rodriguez jumped up and
+went to the high, barred window and looked out of it at the
+morning: far below him a little town with red roofs lay; the smoke
+came up from the chimneys toward him slowly, and spread out flat
+and did not reach so high. Between him and the roofs swallows were
+sailing.
+
+He found water for washing in a cracked pitcher of earthenware and
+as he dressed he looked up at the ceiling and admired mine host's
+device, for there was an open hole that had come noiselessly,
+without any sounds of bolts or lifting of trap-doors, but seemed
+to have opened out all round on perfectly oiled groves, to fit
+that well-to-do body, and down from the middle of it from some
+higher beam hung the rope down which mine host had made his last
+journey.
+
+Before taking leave of his host Rodriguez looked at his poniard,
+which was a good two feet in length, not counting the hilt, and
+was surprised to find it an excellent blade. It bore a design on
+the steel representing a town, which Rodriguez recognised for the
+towers of Toledo; and had held moreover a jewel at the end of the
+hilt, but the little gold socket was empty. Rodriguez therefore
+perceived that the poniard was that of a gallant, and surmised
+that mine host had begun his trade with a butcher's knife, but
+having come by the poniard had found it to be handier for his
+business. Rodriguez being now fully dressed, girt his own blade
+about him, and putting the poniard under his cloak, for he thought
+to find a use for it at the wars, set his plumed hat upon him and
+jauntily stepped from the chamber. By the light of day he saw
+clearly at what point the passages of the inn had dared to make
+their intrusion on the corridors of the fortress, for he walked
+for four paces between walls of huge grey rocks which had never
+been plastered and were clearly a breach in the fortress, though
+whether the breach were made by one of the evil days that had come
+upon the family in their fastness, and whether men had poured
+through it with torches and swords, or whether the gap had been
+cut in later years for mine host of the Dragon and Knight, and he
+had gone quietly through it rubbing his hands, nothing remained to
+show Rodriguez now.
+
+When he came to the dining-chamber he found Morano astir. Morano
+looked up from his overwhelming task of tidying the Inn of the
+Dragon and Knight and then went on with his pretended work, for he
+felt a little ashamed of the knowledge he had concerning the ways
+of that inn, which was more than an honest man should know about
+such a place.
+
+"Good morning, Morano," said Rodriguez blithely.
+
+"Good morning," answered the servant of the Dragon and Knight.
+
+"I am looking for the wars. Would you like a new master, Morano?"
+
+"Indeed," said Morano, "a good master is better to some men's
+minds than a bad one. Yet, you see senor, my bad master has me
+bound never to leave him, by oaths that I do not properly
+understand the meaning of, and that might blast me in any world
+were I to forswear them. He hath bound me by San Sathanas, with
+many others. I do not like the sound of that San Sathanas. And so
+you see, senor, my bad master suits me better than perhaps to be
+whithered in this world by a levin-stroke, and in the next world
+who knows?"
+
+"Morano," said Rodriguez, "there is a dead spider on my bed."
+
+"A dead spider, master?" said Morano, with as much concern in his
+voice as though no spider had ever sullied that chamber before.
+
+"Yes," said Rodriguez, "I shall require you to keep my bed tidy on
+our way to the wars."
+
+"Master," said Morano, "no spider shall come near it, living or
+dead."
+
+And so our company of one going northward through Spain looking
+for romance became a company of two.
+
+"Master," said Morano, "as I do not see him whom I serve, and his
+ways are early ways, I fear some evil has overtaken him, whereby
+we shall be suspect, for none other dwells here: and he is under
+special protection of the Garda Civil; it would be well therefore
+to start for the wars right early."
+
+"The guard protect mine host then." Rodriguez said with as much
+surprise in his tones as he ever permitted himself.
+
+"Master," Morano said, "it could not be otherwise. For so many
+gallants have entered the door of this inn and supped in this
+chamber and never been seen again, and so many suspicious things
+have been found here, such as blood, that it became necessary for
+him to pay the guard well, and so they protect him." And Morano
+hastily slung over his shoulder by leather straps an iron pot and
+a frying-pan and took his broad felt hat from a peg on the wall.
+
+Rodriguez' eyes looked so curiously at the great cooking utensils
+dangling there from the straps that Morano perceived his young
+master did not fully understand these preparations: he therefore
+instructed him thus: "Master, there be two things necessary in the
+wars, strategy and cooking. Now the first of these comes in use
+when the captains speak of their achievements and the historians
+write of the wars. Strategy is a learned thing, master, and the
+wars may not be told of without it, but while the war rageth and
+men be camped upon the foughten field then is the time for
+cooking; for many a man that fights the wars, if he hath not his
+food, were well content to let the enemy live, but feed him and at
+once he becometh proud at heart and cannot a-bear the sight of the
+enemy walking among his tents but must needs slay him outright.
+Aye, master, the cooking for the wars; and when the wars are over
+you who are learned shall study strategy."
+
+And Rodriguez perceived that there was wisdom in the world that
+was not taught in the College of San Josephus, near to his
+father's valleys, where he had learned in his youth the ways of
+books.
+
+"Morano," he said, "let us now leave mine host to entertain la
+Garda."
+
+And at the mention of the guard hurry came on Morano, he closed
+his lips upon his store of wisdom, and together they left the Inn
+of the Dragon and Knight. And when Rodriguez saw shut behind him
+that dark door of oak that he had so persistently entered, and
+through which he had come again to the light of the sun by many
+precautions and some luck, he felt gratitude to Morano. For had it
+not been for Morano's sinister hints, and above all his remark
+that mine host would have driven him thence because he liked him,
+the evil look of the sombre chamber alone might not have been
+enough to persuade him to the precautions that cut short the
+dreadful business of that inn. And with his gratitude was a
+feeling not unlike remorse, for he felt that he had deprived this
+poor man of a part of his regular wages, which would have been his
+own gold ring and the setting that held the sapphire, had all gone
+well with the business. So he slipped the ring from his finger and
+gave it to Morano, sapphire and all.
+
+Morano's expressions of gratitude were in keeping with that
+flowery period in Spain, and might appear ridiculous were I to
+expose them to the eyes of an age in which one in Morano's place
+on such an occasion would have merely said, "Damned good of you
+old nut, not half," and let the matter drop.
+
+I merely record therefore that Morano was grateful and so
+expressed himself; while Rodriguez, in addition to the pleasant
+glow in the mind that comes from a generous action, had another
+feeling that gives all of us pleasure, or comfort at least (until
+it grows monotonous), a feeling of increased safety; for while he
+had the ring upon his finger and Morano went unpaid the thought
+could not help occurring, even to a generous mind, that one of
+these windy nights Morano might come for his wages.
+
+"Master," said Morano looking at the sapphire now on his own
+little finger near the top joint, the only stone amongst his row
+of rings, "you must surely have great wealth."
+
+"Yes," said Rodriguez slapping the scabbard that held his
+Castilian blade. And when he saw that Morano's eyes were staring
+at the little emeralds that were dotted along the velvet of the
+scabbard he explained that it was the sword that was his wealth:
+
+"For in the wars," he said, "are all things to be won, and nothing
+is unobtainable to the sword. For parchment and custom govern all
+the possessions of man, as they taught me in the College of San
+Josephus. Yet the sword is at first the founder and discoverer of
+all possessions; and this my father told me before he gave me this
+sword, which hath already acquired in the old time fair castles
+with many a tower."
+
+"And those that dwelt in the castles, master, before the sword
+came?" said Morano.
+
+"They died and went dismally to Hell," said Rodriguez, "as the old
+songs say."
+
+They walked on then in silence. Morano, with his low forehead and
+greater girth of body than of brain to the superficial observer,
+was not incapable of thought. However slow his thoughts may have
+come, Morano was pondering surely. Suddenly the puckers on his
+little forehead cleared and he brightly looked at Rodriguez as
+they went on side by side.
+
+"Master," Morano said, "when you choose a castle in the wars, let
+it above all things be one of those that is easy to be defended;
+for castles are easily got, as the old songs tell, and in the heat
+of combat positions are quickly stormed, and no more ado; but,
+when wars are over, then is the time for ease and languorous days
+and the imperilling of the soul, though not beyond the point where
+our good fathers may save it."
+
+"Nay, Morano," Rodriguez said, "no man, as they taught me well in
+the College of San Josephus, should ever imperil his soul."
+
+"But, master," Morano said, "a man imperils his body in the wars
+yet hopes by dexterity and his sword to draw it safely thence: so
+a man of courage and high heart may surely imperil his soul and
+still hope to bring it at the last to salvation."
+
+"Not so," said Rodriguez, and gave his mind to pondering upon the
+exact teaching he had received on this very point, but could not
+clearly remember.
+
+So they walked in silence, Rodriguez thinking still of this
+spiritual problem, Morano turning, though with infinite slowness,
+to another thought upon a lower plane.
+
+And after a while Rodriguez' eyes turned again to the flowers, and
+he felt his meditation, as youth will, and looking abroad he saw
+the wonder of Spring calling forth the beauty of Spain, and he
+lifted up his head and his heart rejoiced with the anemones, as
+hearts at his age do: but Morano clung to his thought.
+
+It was long before Rodriguez' fanciful thoughts came back from
+among the flowers, for among those delicate earliest blooms of
+Spring his youthful visions felt they were with familiars; so they
+tarried, neglecting the dusty road and poor gross Morano. But when
+his fancies left the flowers at last and looked again at Morano,
+Rodriguez perceived that his servant was all troubled with
+thought: so he left Morano in silence for his thought to come to
+maturity, for he had formed a liking already for the judgments of
+Morano's simple mind.
+
+They walked in silence for the space of an hour, and at last
+Morano spoke. It was then noon. "Master," he said, "at this hour
+it is the custom of la Garda to enter the Inn of the Dragon and to
+dine at the expense of mine host."
+
+"A merry custom," said Rodriguez.
+
+"Master," said Morano, "if they find him in less than his usual
+health they will get their dinners for themselves in the larder
+and dine and afterwards sleep. But after that; master, after that,
+should anything inauspicious have befallen mine host, they will
+seek out and ask many questions concerning all travellers, too
+many for our liking."
+
+"We are many good miles from the Inn of the Dragon and Knight,"
+said Rodriguez.
+
+"Master, when they have eaten and slept and asked questions they
+will follow on horses," said Morano.
+
+"We can hide," said Rodriguez, and he looked round over the plain,
+very full of flowers, but empty and bare under the blue sky of any
+place in which a man might hide to escape from pursuers on horse
+back. He perceived then that he had no plan.
+
+"Master," said Morano, "there is no hiding like disguises."
+
+Once more Rodriguez looked round him over the plain, seeing no
+houses, no men; and his opinion of Morano's judgment sank when he
+said disguises. But then Morano unfolded to him that plan which up
+to that day had never been tried before, so far as records tell,
+in all the straits in which fugitive men have been; and which
+seems from my researches in verse and prose never to have been
+attempted since.
+
+The plan was this, astute as Morano, and simple as his naive mind.
+The clothing for which Rodriguez searched the plain vainly was
+ready to hand. No disguise was effective against la Garda, they
+had too many suspicions, their skill was to discover disguises.
+But in the moment of la Garda's triumph, when they had found out
+the disguise, when success had lulled the suspicions for which
+they were infamous, then was the time to trick la Garda. Rodriguez
+wondered; but the slow mind of Morano was sure, and now he came to
+the point, the fruit of his hour's thinking. Rodriguez should
+disguise himself as Morano. When la Garda discovered that he was
+not the man he appeared to be, a study to which they devoted their
+lives, their suspicions would rest and there would be an end of
+it. And Morano should disguise himself as Rodriguez.
+
+It was a new idea. Had Rodriguez been twice his age he would have
+discarded it at once; for age is guided by precedent which, when
+pursued, is a dangerous guide indeed. Even as it was he was
+critical, for the novelty of the thing coming thus from his gross
+servant surprised him as much as though Morano had uttered poetry
+of his own when he sang, as he sometimes did, certain merry
+lascivious songs of Spain that any one of the last few centuries
+knew as well as any of the others.
+
+And would not la Garda find out that he was himself, Rodriguez
+asked, as quickly as they found out he was not Morano.
+
+"That," said Morano, "is not the way of la Garda. For once let la
+Garda come by a suspicion, such as that you, master, are but
+Morano, and they will cling to it even to the last, and not
+abandon it until they needs must, and then throw it away as it
+were in disgust and ride hence at once, for they like not tarrying
+long near one who has seen them mistaken."
+
+"They will soon then come by another suspicion," said Rodriguez.
+
+"Not so, master," answered Morano, "for those that are as
+suspicious as la Garda change their suspicions but slowly. A
+suspicion is an old song to them."
+
+"Then," said Rodriguez, "I shall be hard set ever to show that I
+am not you if they ever suspect I am."
+
+"It will be hard, master," Morano answered; "but we shall do it,
+for we shall have truth upon our side."
+
+"How shall we disguise ourselves?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"Master," said Morano, "when you came to our town none knew you
+and all marked your clothes. As for me my fat body is better known
+than my clothes, yet am I not too well known by la Garda, for,
+being an honest man, whenever la Garda came I used to hide."
+
+"You did well," said Rodriguez.
+
+"Certainly I did well," said Morano, "for had they seen me they
+might, on account of certain matters, have taken me to prison, and
+prison is no place for an honest man."
+
+"Let us disguise ourselves," said Rodriguez.
+
+"Master," answered Morano, "the brain is greater than the stomach,
+and now more than at any time we need the counsel of the brain;
+let us therefore appease the clamours of the stomach that it be
+silent."
+
+And he drew out from amongst his clothing a piece of sacking in
+which was a mass of bacon and some lard, and unslung his huge
+frying-pan. Rodriguez had entirely forgotten the need of food, but
+now the memory of it had rushed upon him like a flood over a
+barrier, as soon as he saw the bacon. And when they had collected
+enough of tiny inflammable things, for it was a treeless plain,
+and Morano had made a fire, and the odour of the bacon became
+perceptible, this memory was hugely intensified.
+
+"Let us eat while they eat, master," said Morano, "and plan while
+they sleep, and disguise ourselves while they pursue."
+
+And this they did: for after they had eaten they dug up earth and
+gathered leaves with which to fill the gaps in Morano's garments
+when they should hang on Rodriguez, they plucked a geranium with
+whose dye they deepened Rodriguez' complexion, and with the sap
+from the stalk of a weed Morano toned to a pallor the ruddy brown
+of his tough cheeks. Then they changed clothes altogether, which
+made Morano gasp: and after that nothing remained but to cut off
+the delicate black moustachios of Rodriguez and to stick them to
+the face of Morano with the juice of another flower that he knew
+where to find. Rodriguez sighed when he saw them go. He had
+pictured ecstatic glances cast some day at those moustachios,
+glances from under long eyelashes twinkling at evening from
+balconies; and looking at them where they were now, he felt that
+this was impossible.
+
+For one moment Morano raised his head with an air, as it were
+preening himself, when the new moustachios had stuck; but as soon
+as he saw, or felt, his master's sorrow at their loss he
+immediately hung his head, showing nothing but shame for the loss
+he had caused his master, or for the impropriety of those delicate
+growths that so ill become his jowl. And now they took the road
+again, Rodriguez with the great frying-pan and cooking-pot; no
+longer together, but not too far apart for la Garda to take them
+both at once, and to make the doubly false charge that should so
+confound their errand. And Morano wore that old triumphant sword,
+and carried the mandolin that was ever young.
+
+They had not gone far when it was as Morano had said; for, looking
+back, as they often did, to the spot where their road touched the
+sky-line, they saw la Garda spurring, seven of them in their
+unmistakable looped hats, very clear against the sky which a
+moment ago seemed so fair.
+
+When the seven saw the two they did not spare the dust; and first
+they came to Morano.
+
+"You," they said, "are Rodriguez Trinidad Fernandez, Concepcion
+Henrique Maria, a Lord of the Valleys of Arguento Harez."
+
+"No, masters," said Morano.
+
+Oh but denials were lost upon la Garda.
+
+Denials inflamed their suspicions as no other evidence could. Many
+a man had they seen with his throat in the hands of the public
+garrotter; and all had begun with denials who ended thus. They
+looked at the mandolin, at the gay cloak, at the emeralds in the
+scabbard, for wherever emeralds go there is evidence to identify
+them, until the nature of man changes or the price of emeralds.
+They spoke hastily among themselves.
+
+"Without doubt," said one of them, "you are whom we said." And
+they arrested Morano.
+
+Then they spurred on to Rodriguez. "You are, they said, "as no man
+doubts, one Morano, servant at the Inn of the Dragon and Knight,
+whose good master is, as we allege, dead."
+
+"Masters," answered Rodriguez, "I am but a poor traveller, and no
+servant at any inn."
+
+Now la Garda, as I have indicated, will hear all things except
+denials; and thus to receive two within the space of two moments
+infuriated them so fiercely that they were incapable of forming
+any other theory that day except the one they held.
+
+There are many men like this; they can form a plausible theory and
+grasp its logical points, but take it away from them and destroy
+it utterly before their eyes, and they will not so easily lash
+their tired brains at once to build another theory in place of the
+one that is ruined.
+
+"As the saints live," they said, "you are Morano." And they
+arrested Rodriguez too.
+
+Now when they began to turn back by the way they had come
+Rodriguez began to fear overmuch identification, so he assured la
+Garda that in the next village ahead of them were those who would
+answer all questions concerning him, as well as being the
+possessors of the finest vintage of wine in the kingdom of Spain.
+
+Now it may be that the mention of this wine soothed the anger
+caused in the men of la Garda by two denials, or it may be that
+curiosity guided them, at any rate they took the road that led
+away from last night's sinister shelter, Rodriguez and five of la
+Garda. Two of them stayed behind with Morano, undecided as yet
+which way to take, though looking wistfully the way that that wine
+was said to be; and Rodriguez left Morano to his own devices, in
+which he trusted profoundly.
+
+Now Rodriguez knew not the name of the next village that they
+would come to nor the names of any of the dwellers in it.
+
+Yet he had a plan. As he went by the side of one of the horses he
+questioned the rider.
+
+"Can Morano write?" he said. La Garda laughed.
+
+"Can Morano talk Latin?" he said. La Garda crossed themselves, all
+five men. And after some while of riding, and hard walking for
+Rodriguez, to whom they allowed a hand on a stirrup leather, there
+came in sight the tops of the brown roofs of a village over a fold
+of the plain. "Is this your village?" said one of his captors.
+
+"Surely," answered Rodriguez.
+
+"What is its name?" said one.
+
+"It has many names," said Rodriguez.
+
+And then another one of them recognised it from the shape of its
+roofs. "It is Saint Judas-not-Iscariot," he said.
+
+"Aye, so strangers call it," said Rodriguez.
+
+And where the road turned round that fold of the plain, lolling a
+little to its left in the idle Spanish air, they came upon the
+village all in view. I do not know how to describe this village to
+you, my reader, for the words that mean to you what it was are all
+the wrong words to use. "Antique," "old-world," "quaint," seem
+words with which to tell of it. Yet it had no antiquity denied to
+the other villages; it had been brought to birth like them by the
+passing of time, and was nursed like them in the lap of plains or
+valleys of Spain. Nor was it quainter than any of its neighbours,
+though it was like itself alone, as they had their characters
+also; and, though no village in the world was like it, it differed
+only from the next as sister differs from sister. To those that
+dwelt in it, it was wholly apart from all the world of man.
+
+Most of its tall white houses with green doors were gathered about
+the market-place, in which were pigeons and smells and declining
+sunlight, as Rodriguez and his escort came towards it, and from
+round a corner at the back of it the short, repeated song of one
+who would sell a commodity went up piercingly.
+
+This was all very long ago. Time has wrecked that village now.
+Centuries have flowed over it, some stormily, some smoothly, but
+so many that, of the village Rodriguez saw, there can be now no
+more than wreckage. For all I know a village of that name may
+stand on that same plain, but the Saint Judas-not-Iscariot that
+Rodriguez knew is gone like youth.
+
+Queerly tiled, sheltered by small dense trees, and standing a
+little apart, Rodriguez recognised the house of the Priest. He
+recognised it by a certain air it had. Thither he pointed and la
+Garda rode. Again he spoke to them. "Can Morano speak Latin?" he
+said.
+
+"God forbid!" said la Garda.
+
+They dismounted and opened a gate that was gilded all over, in a
+low wall of round boulders. They went up a narrow path between
+thick ilices and came to the green door. They pulled a bell whose
+handle was a symbol carved in copper, one of the Priest's
+mysteries. The bell boomed through the house, a tiny musical boom,
+and the Priest opened the door; and Rodriguez addressed him in
+Latin. And the Priest answered him.
+
+At first la Garda had not realised what had happened. And then the
+Priest beckoned and they all entered his house, for Rodriguez had
+asked him for ink. Into a room they came where a silver ink-pot
+was, and the grey plume of the goose. Picture no such ink-pot, my
+reader, as they sell to-day in shops, the silver no thicker than
+paper, and perhaps a pattern all over it guaranteed artistic. It
+was molten silver well wrought, and hollowed for ink. And in the
+hollow there was the magical fluid, the stuff that rules the world
+and hinders time; that in which flows the will of a king, to
+establish his laws for ever; that which gives valleys unto new
+possessors; that whereby towers are held by their lawful owners;
+that which, used grimly by the King's judge, is death; that which,
+when poets play, is mirth for ever and ever.
+
+No wonder la Garda looked at it in awe, no wonder they crossed
+themselves again: and then Rodriguez wrote. In the silence that
+followed the jaws of la Garda dropped, while the old Priest
+slightly smiled, for he somewhat divined the situation already;
+and, being the people's friend, he loved not la Garda more than he
+was bound by the rules of his duty to man.
+
+Then one of la Garda spoke, bringing back his confidence with a
+bluster. "Morano has sold his soul to Satan," he said, "in
+exchange for Satan's aid, and Satan has taught his tongue Latin
+and guides his fingers in the affairs of the pen." And so said all
+la Garda, rejoicing at finding an explanation where a moment ago
+there was none, as all men at such times do: little it matters
+what the explanation be: does a man in Sahara, who finds water
+suddenly, in quire with precision what its qualities are?
+
+And then the Priest said a word and made a sign, against which
+Satan himself can only prevail with difficulty, and in presence of
+which his spells can never endure. And after this Rodriguez wrote
+again. Then were la Garda silent.
+
+And at length the leader said, and he called on them all to
+testify, that he had made no charge whatever against this
+traveller; moreover, they had escorted him on his way out of
+respect for him, because the roads were dangerous, and must now
+depart because they had higher duties. So la Garda departed,
+looking before them with stern, preoccupied faces and urging their
+horses on, as men who go on an errand of great urgency. And
+Rodriguez, having thanked them for their protection upon the road,
+turned back into the house and the two sat down together, and
+Rodriguez told his rescuer the story of the hospitality of the Inn
+of the Dragon and Knight.
+
+Not as confession he told it, but as a pleasant tale, for he
+looked on the swift demise of la Garda's friend, in the night, in
+the spidery room, as a fair blessing for Spain, a thing most
+suited to the sweet days of Spring. The spiritual man rejoiced to
+hear such a tale, as do all men of peace to hear talk of violent
+deeds in which they may not share. And when the tale was ended he
+reproved Rodriguez exceedingly, explaining to him the nature of
+the sin of blood, and telling him that absolution could be come by
+now, though hardly, but how on some future occasion there might be
+none to be had. And Rodriguez listened with all the gravity of
+expression that youth knows well how to wear while its thoughts
+are nimbly dancing far away in fair fields of adventure or love.
+
+And darkness came down and lamps were carried in: and the reverend
+father asked Rodriguez in what other affairs of violence his sword
+had unhappily been. And Rodriguez knew well the history of that
+sword, having gathered all that concerned it out of spoken legend
+or song. And although the reverend man frowned minatorily whenever
+he heard of its passings through the ribs of the faithful, and
+nodded as though his head gave benediction when he heard of the
+destruction of God's most vile enemy the infidel, and though he
+gasped a little through his lips when he heard of certain
+tarryings of that sword, in scented gardens, while Christian
+knights should sleep and their swords hang on the wall, though
+sometimes even a little he raised his hands, yet he leaned forward
+always, listening well, and picturing clearly as though his
+gleaming eyes could see them, each doleful tale of violence or
+sin. And so night came, and began to wear away, and neither knew
+how late the hour was. And then as Rodriguez spoke of an evening
+in a garden, of which some old song told well, a night in early
+summer under the evening star, and that sword there as always; as
+he told of his grandfather as poets had loved to tell, going among
+the scents of the huge flowers, familiar with the dark garden as
+the moths that drifted by him; as he spoke of a sigh heard
+faintly, as he spoke of danger near, whether to body or soul; as
+the reverend father was about to raise both his hands; there came
+a thunder of knockings upon the locked green door.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE THIRD CHRONICLE
+
+HOW HE CAME TO THE HOUSE OF WONDER
+
+
+It was the gross Morano. Here he had tracked Rodriguez, for where
+la Garda goes is always known, and rumour of it remains long
+behind them, like the scent of a fox. He told no tale of his
+escape more than a dog does who comes home some hours late; a dog
+comes back to his master, that is all, panting a little perhaps;
+someone perhaps had caught him and he escaped and came home, a
+thing too natural to attempt to speak of by any of the signs that
+a dog knows.
+
+Part of Morano's method seems to have resembled Rodriguez', for
+just as Rodriguez spoke Latin, so Morano fell back upon his own
+natural speech, that he as it were unbridled and allowed to run
+free, the coarseness of which had at first astounded, and then
+delighted, la Garda.
+
+"And did they not suspect that you were yourself?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"No, master," Morano answered, "for I said that I was the brother
+of the King of Aragon."
+
+"The King of Aragon!" Rodriguez said, going to the length of
+showing surprise. "Yes, indeed, master." said Morano, "and they
+recognised me."
+
+"Recognised you!" exclaimed the Priest.
+
+"Indeed so," said Morano, "for they said that they were themselves
+the Kings of Aragon; and so, father, they recognised me for their
+brother."
+
+"That you should not have said," the Priest told Morano.
+
+"Reverend father," replied Morano, "as Heaven shines, I believed
+that what I said was true." And Morano sighed deeply. "And now,"
+he said, "I know it is true no more."
+
+Whether he sighed for the loss of his belief in that exalted
+relationship, or whether for the loss of that state of mind in
+which such beliefs come easily, there was nothing in his sigh to
+show. They questioned him further, but he said no more: he was
+here, there was no more to say: he was here and la Garda was gone.
+
+And then the reverend man brought for them a great supper, even at
+that late hour, for many an hour had slipped softly by as he heard
+the sins of the sword; and wine he set out, too, of a certain
+golden vintage, long lost--I fear--my reader: but this he gave not
+to Morano lest he should be once more, what the reverend father
+feared to entertain, that dread hidalgo, the King of Aragon's
+brother. And after that, the stars having then gone far on their
+ways, the old Priest rose and offered a bed to Rodriguez; and even
+as he eyed Morano, wondering where to put him, and was about to
+speak, for he had no other bed, Morano went to a corner of the
+room and curled up and lay down. And by the time his host had
+walked over to him and spoken, asking anxiously if he needed
+nothing more, he was almost already asleep, and muttered in
+answer, after having been spoken to twice, no more than "Straw,
+reverend father, straw."
+
+An armful of this the good man brought him, and then showed
+Rodriguez to his room; and they can scarcely have reached it
+before Morano was back in Aragon again, walking on golden shoes
+(which were sometimes wings), proud among lesser princes.
+
+As precaution for the night Rodriguez took one more glance at his
+host's kind face; and then, with sword out of reach and an
+unlocked door, he slept till the songs of birds out of the deeps
+of the ilices made sleep any longer impossible.
+
+The third morning of Rodriguez' wandering blazed over Spain like
+brass; flowers and grass and sky were twinkling all together.
+
+When Rodriguez greeted his host Morano was long astir, having
+awakened with dawn, for the simpler and humbler the creature the
+nearer it is akin to the earth and the sun. The forces that woke
+the birds and opened the flowers stirred the gross lump of Morano,
+ending his sleep as they ended the nightingale's song.
+
+They breakfasted hurriedly and Rodriguez rose to depart, feeling
+that he had taken hospitality that had not been offered. But
+against his departure was the barrier of all the politeness of
+Spain. The house was his, said his host, and even the small grove
+of ilices.
+
+If I told you half of the things that the reverend man said, you
+would say: "This writer is affected. I do not like all this
+flowery mush." I think it safer, my reader, not to tell you any of
+it. Let us suppose that he merely said, "Quite all right," and
+that when Rodriguez thanked him on one knee he answered, "Not at
+all;" and that so Rodriguez and Morano left. If here it miss some
+flash of the fair form of Truth it is the fault of the age I write
+for.
+
+The road again, dust again, birds and the blaze of leaves, these
+were the background of my wanderers, until the eye had gone as far
+as the eye can roam, and there were the tips of some far pale-blue
+mountains that now came into view.
+
+They were still in each other's clothes; but the village was not
+behind them very far when Morano explained, for he knew the ways
+of la Garda, that having arrested two men upon this road, they
+would now arrest two men each on all the other roads, in order to
+show the impartiality of the Law, which constantly needs to be
+exhibited; and that therefore all men were safe on the road they
+were on for a long while to come.
+
+Now there seemed to Rodriguez to be much good sense in what Morano
+had said; and so indeed there was for they had good laws in Spain,
+and they differed little, though so long ago, from our own
+excellent system. Therefore they changed once more, giving back to
+each other everything but, alas, those delicate black moustachios;
+and these to Rodriguez seemed gone for ever, for the growth of new
+ones seemed so far ahead to the long days of youth that his hopes
+could scarce reach to them.
+
+When Morano found himself once more in those clothes that had been
+with him night and day for so many years he seemed to expand; I
+mean no metaphor here; he grew visibly fatter.
+
+"Ah," said Morano after a huge breath, "last night I dreamed, in
+your illustrious clothes, that I was in lofty station. And now,
+master, I am comfortable."
+
+"Which were best, think you," said Rodriguez, "if you could have
+but one, a lofty place or comfort?" Even in those days such a
+question was trite, but Rodriguez uttered it only thinking to dip
+in the store of Morano's simple wisdom, as one may throw a mere
+worm to catch a worthy fish. But in this he was disappointed; for
+Morano made no neat comparison nor even gave an opinion, saying
+only, "Master, while I have comfort how shall I judge the case of
+any who have not?" And no more would he say. His new found
+comfort, lost for a day and night, seemed so to have soothed his
+body that it closed the gates of the mind, as too much luxury may,
+even with poets.
+
+And now Rodriguez thought of his quest again, and the two of them
+pushed on briskly to find the wars.
+
+For an hour they walked in silence an empty road. And then they
+came upon a row of donkeys; piled high with the bark of the cork-
+tree, that men were bringing slowly from far woods. Some of the
+men were singing as they went. They passed slow in the sunshine.
+
+"Oh, master," said Morano when they were gone, "I like not that
+lascivious loitering."
+
+"Why, Morano?" said Rodriguez. "It was not God that made hurry."
+
+"Master," answered Morano, "I know well who made hurry. And may he
+not overtake my soul at the last. Yet it is bad for our fortunes
+that these men should loiter thus. You want your castle, master;
+and I, I want not always to wander roads, with la Garda perhaps
+behind and no certain place to curl up and sleep in front. I look
+for a heap of straw in the cellar of your great castle."
+
+"Yes, yes, you shall have it," his master said, "but how do these
+folks hinder you?" For Morano was scowling at them over his
+shoulder in a way that was somehow spoiling the gladness of
+Spring.
+
+"The air is full of their singing," Morano said. "It is as though
+their souls were already flying to Hell, and cawing hoarse with
+sin all the way as they go. And they loiter, and they linger..."
+Oh, but Morano was angry.
+
+"But," said Rodriguez, "how does their lingering harm you?"
+
+"Where are the wars, master? Where are the wars?" blurted Morano,
+his round face turning redder. "The donkeys would be dead, the men
+would be running, there would be shouts, cries, and confusion, if
+the wars were anywhere near. There would be all things but this."
+
+The men strolled on singing and so passed slow into distance.
+Morano was right, though I know not how he knew.
+
+And now the men and the donkeys were nearly out of sight, but had
+not yet at all emerged from the wrath of Morano. "Lascivious
+knaves," muttered that disappointed man. And whenever he faintly
+heard dim snatches of their far song that a breeze here, and
+another there, brought over the plain as it ran on the errands of
+Spring, he cursed their sins under his breath. Though it seemed
+not so much their sins that moved his wrath as the leisure they
+had for committing them.
+
+"Peace, peace, Morano," said Rodriguez.
+
+"It is that," said Morano, "that is troubling me."
+
+"What?"
+
+"This same peace."
+
+"Morano," said Rodriguez, "I had when young to study the affairs
+of men; and this is put into books, and so they make history. Now
+I learned that there is no thing in which men have taken delight,
+that is ever put away from them; for it seems that time, which
+altereth every custom, hath altered none of our likings: and in
+every chapter they taught me there were these wars to be found."
+
+"Master, the times are altered," said Morano sadly. "It is not now
+as in old days."
+
+And this was not the wisdom of Morano, for anger had clouded his
+judgment. And a faint song came yet from the donkey-drivers,
+wavering over the flowers.
+
+"Master," Morano said, "there are men like those vile sin-mongers,
+who have taken delight in peace. It may be that peace has been
+brought upon the world by one of these lousy likings."
+
+"The delight of peace," said Rodriguez, "is in its contrast to
+war. If war were banished this delight were gone. And man lost
+none of his delights in any chapter I read."
+
+The word and the meaning of CONTRAST were such as is understood by
+reflective minds, the product of education. Morano felt rather
+than reflected; and the word CONTRAST meant nothing to him. This
+ended their conversation. And the songs of the donkey-drivers,
+light though they were, being too heavy to be carried farther by
+the idle air of Spring, Morano ceased cursing their sins.
+
+And now the mountains rose up taller, seeming to stretch
+themselves and raise their heads. In a while they seemed to be
+peering over the plain. They that were as pale ghosts, far off,
+dim like Fate, in the early part of the morning, now appeared
+darker, more furrowed, more sinister, more careworn; more
+immediately concerned with the affairs of Earth, and so more
+menacing to earthly things.
+
+Still they went on and still the mountains grew. And noon came,
+when Spain sleeps.
+
+And now the plain was altering, as though cool winds from the
+mountains brought other growths to birth, so that they met with
+bushes straggling wild; free, careless and mysterious, as they do,
+where there is none to teach great Nature how to be tidy.
+
+The wanderers chose a clump of these that were gathered near the
+way, like gypsies camped awhile midway on a wonderful journey, who
+at dawn will rise and go, leaving but a bare trace of their
+resting and no guess of their destiny; so fairy-like, so free, so
+phantasmal those dark shrubs seemed.
+
+Morano lay down on the very edge of the shade of one, and
+Rodriguez lay fair in the midst of the shade of another, whereby
+anyone passing that way would have known which was the older
+traveller. Morano, according to his custom, was asleep almost
+immediately; but Rodriguez, with wonder and speculation each
+toying with novelty and pulling it different ways between them,
+stayed awhile wakeful. Then he too slept, and a bird thought it
+safe to return to an azalea of its own; which it lately fled from
+troubled by the arrival of these two.
+
+And Rodriguez the last to sleep was the first awake, for the shade
+of the shrub left him, and he awoke in the blaze of the sun to see
+Morano still sheltered, well in the middle now of the shadow he
+chose. The gross sleep of Morano I will not describe to you,
+reader. I have chosen a pleasant tale for you in a happy land, in
+the fairest time of year, in a golden age: I have youth to show
+you and an ancient sword, birds, flowers and sunlight, in a plain
+unharmed by any dream of commerce: why should I show you the sleep
+of that inelegant man whose bulk lay cumbering the earth like a
+low, unseemly mountain?
+
+Rodriguez overtook the shade he had lost and lay there resting
+until Morano awoke, driven all at once from sleep by a dream or by
+mere choking. Then from the intricacies of his clothing, which to
+him after those two days was what home is to some far wanderer,
+Morano drew out once more a lump of bacon. Then came the fry-pan
+and then a fire: it was the Wanderers' Mess. That mess-room has
+stood in many lands and has only one roof. We are proud of that
+roof, all we who belong to that Mess. We boast of it when we show
+it to our friends when it is all set out at night. It has
+Aldebaran in it, the Bear and Orion, and at the other end the
+Southern Cross. Yes we are proud of our roof when it is at its
+best.
+
+What am I saying? I should be talking of bacon. Yes, but there is
+a way of cooking it in our Mess that I want to tell you and
+cannot. I've tasted bacon there that isn't the same as what you
+get at the Ritz. And I want to tell you how that bacon tastes; and
+I can't so I talk about stars. But perhaps you are one of us,
+reader, and then you will understand. Only why the hell don't we
+get back there again where the Evening Star swings low on the wall
+of the Mess?
+
+When they rose from table, when they got up from the earth, and
+the frying-pan was slung on Morano's back, adding grease to the
+mere surface of his coat whose texture could hold no more, they
+pushed on briskly for they saw no sign of houses, unless what
+Rodriguez saw now dimly above a ravine were indeed a house in the
+mountains.
+
+They had walked from eight till noon without any loitering. They
+must have done fifteen miles since the mountains were pale blue.
+And now, every mile they went, on the most awful of the dark
+ridges the object Rodriguez saw seemed more and more like a house.
+Yet neither then, nor as they drew still nearer, nor when they saw
+it close, nor looking back on it after years, did it somehow seem
+quite right. And Morano sometimes crossed himself as he looked at
+it, and said nothing.
+
+Rodriguez, as they walked ceaselessly through the afternoon,
+seeing his servant show some sign of weariness, which comes not to
+youth, pointed out the house looking nearer than it really was on
+the mountain, and told him that he should find there straw, and
+they would sup and stay the night. Afterwards, when the strange
+appearance of the house, varying with different angles, filled him
+with curious forebodings, Rodriguez would make no admission to his
+servant, but held to the plan he had announced, and so approached
+the queer roofs, neglecting the friendly stars.
+
+Through the afternoon the two travellers pushed on mostly in
+silence, for the glances that house seemed to give him from the
+edge of its perilous ridge, had driven the mirth from Rodriguez
+and had even checked the garrulity on the lips of the tougher
+Morano, if garrulity can be ascribed to him whose words seldom
+welled up unless some simple philosophy troubled his deeps. The
+house seemed indeed to glance at him, for as their road wound on,
+the house showed different aspects, different walls and edges of
+walls, and different curious roofs; all these walls seemed to peer
+at him. One after another they peered, new ones glided
+imperceptibly into sight as though to say, We see too.
+
+The mountains were not before them but a little to the right of
+their path, until new ones appeared ahead of them like giants
+arising from sleep, and then their path seemed blocked as though
+by a mighty wall against which its feeble wanderings went in vain.
+In the end it turned a bit to its right and went straight for a
+dark mountain, where a wild track seemed to come down out of the
+rocks to meet it, and upon this track looked down that sinister
+house. Had you been there, my reader, you would have said, any of
+us had said, Why not choose some other house? There were no other
+houses. He who dwelt on the edge of the ravine that ran into that
+dark mountain was wholly without neighbours.
+
+And evening came, and still they were far from the mountain.
+
+The sun set on their left. But it was in the eastern sky that the
+greater splendour was; for the low rays streaming across lit up
+some stormy clouds that were brooding behind the mountain and
+turned their gloomy forms to an astounding purple.
+
+And after this their road began to rise toward the ridges. The
+mountains darkened and the sinister house was about to emerge with
+their shadows, when he who dwelt there lit candles.
+
+The act astonished the wayfarers. All through half the day they
+had seen the house, until it seemed part of the mountains; evil it
+seemed like their ridges, that were black and bleak and
+forbidding, and strange it seemed with a strangeness that moved no
+fears they could name, yet it seemed inactive as night.
+
+Now lights appeared showing that someone moved. Window after
+window showed to the bare dark mountain its gleaming yellow glare;
+there in the night the house forsook the dark rocks that seemed
+kin to it, by glowing as they could never glow, by doing what the
+beasts that haunted them could not do: this was the lair of man.
+Here was the light of flame but the rocks remained dark and cold
+as the wind of night that went over them, he who dwelt now with
+the lights had forsaken the rocks, his neighbours.
+
+And, when all were lit, one light high in a tower shone green.
+These lights appearing out of the mountain thus seemed to speak to
+Rodriguez and to tell him nothing. And Morano wondered, as he
+seldom troubled to do.
+
+They pushed on up the steepening path.
+
+"Like you the looks of it?" said Rodriguez once.
+
+"Aye, master," answered Morano, "so there be straw."
+
+"You see nothing strange there, then?" Rodriguez said.
+
+"Master," Morano said, "there be saints for all requirements."
+
+Any fears he had felt about that house before, now as he neared it
+were gone; it was time to put away fears and face the event; thus
+worked Morano's philosophy. And he turned his thoughts to the
+achievements upon earth of a certain Saint who met Satan, and
+showed to the sovereign of Hell a discourtesy alien to the ways of
+the Church.
+
+It was dark now, and the yellow lights got larger as they drew
+nearer the windows, till they saw large shadows obscurely passing
+from room to room. The ascent was steep now and the pathway
+stopped. No track of any kind approached the house. It stood on a
+precipice-edge as though one of the rocks of the mountain: they
+climbed over rocks to reach it. The windows flickered and blinked
+at them.
+
+Nothing invited them there in the look of that house, but they
+were now in such a forbidding waste that shelter had to be found;
+they were all among edges of rock as black as the night and hard
+as the material of which Cosmos was formed, at first upon Chaos'
+brink. The sound of their climbing ran noisily up the mountain but
+no sound came from the house: only the shadows moved more swiftly
+across a room, passed into other rooms and came hurrying back.
+Sometimes the shadows stayed and seemed to peer; and when the
+travellers stood and watched to see what they were they would
+disappear and there were no shadows at all, and the rooms were
+filled instead with their wondering speculation. Then they pushed
+on over rocks that seemed never trodden by man, so sharp were they
+and slanting, all piled together: it seemed the last waste, to
+which all shapeless rocks had been thrown.
+
+Morano and these black rocks seemed shaped by a different scheme;
+indeed the rocks had never been shaped at all, they were just raw
+pieces of Chaos. Morano climbed over their edges with moans and
+discomfort. Rodriguez heard him behind him and knew by his moans
+when he came to the top of each sharp rock.
+
+The rocks became savager, huger, even more sharp and more angular.
+They were there in the dark in multitudes. Over these Rodriguez
+staggered, and Morano clambered and tumbled; and so they came,
+breathing hard, to the lonely house.
+
+In the wall that their hands had reached there was no door, so
+they felt along it till they came to the corner, and beyond the
+corner was the front wall of the house. In it was the front door.
+But so nearly did this door open upon the abyss that the bats that
+fled from their coming, from where they hung above the door of
+oak, had little more to do than fall from their crannies, slanting
+ever so slightly, to find themselves safe from man in the velvet
+darkness, that lay between cliffs so lonely they were almost
+strangers to Echo. And here they floated upon errands far from our
+knowledge; while the travellers coming along the rocky ledge
+between destruction and shelter, knocked on the oaken door.
+
+The sound of their knocking boomed huge and slow through the house
+as though they had struck the door of the very mountain. And no
+one came. And then Rodriguez saw dimly in the darkness the great
+handle of a bell, carved like a dragon running down the wall: he
+pulled it and a cry of pain arose from the basement of the house.
+
+Even Morano wondered. It was like a terrible spirit in distress.
+It was long before Rodriguez dare touch the handle again. Could it
+have been the bell? He felt the iron handle and the iron chain
+that went up from it. How could it have been the bell! The bell
+had not sounded: he had not pulled hard enough: that scream was
+fortuitous. The night on that rocky ledge had jangled his nerves.
+He pulled again and more firmly. The answering scream was more
+terrible. Rodriguez could doubt no longer, as he sprang back from
+the bell-handle, that with the chain he had pulled he inflicted
+some unknown agony.
+
+The scream had awakened slow steps that now came towards the
+travellers, down corridors, as it sounded, of stone. And then
+chains fell on stone and the door of oak was opened by some one
+older than what man hopes to come to, with small, peaked lips as
+those of some woodland thing.
+
+"Senores," the old one said, "the Professor welcomes you."
+
+They stood and stared at his age, and Morano blurted uncouthly
+what both of them felt. "You are old, grandfather," he said.
+
+"Ah, Senores," the old man sighed, "the Professor does not allow
+me to be young. I have been here years and years but he never
+allowed it. I have served him well but it is still the same. I say
+to him, 'Master, I have served you long ...' but he interrupts me
+for he will have none of youth. Young servants go among the
+villages, he says. And so, and so ..."
+
+"You do not think your master can give you youth!" said Rodriguez.
+
+The old man knew that he had talked too much, voicing that
+grievance again of which even the rocks were weary. "Yes," he said
+briefly, and bowed and led the way into the house. In one of the
+corridors running out of the hall down which he was leading
+silently, Rodriguez overtook that old man and questioned him to
+his face.
+
+"Who is this professor?" he said.
+
+By the light of a torch that spluttered in an iron clamp on the
+wall Rodriguez questioned him with these words, and Morano with
+his wondering, wistful eyes. The old man halted and turned half
+round, and lifted his head and answered. "In the University of
+Saragossa," he said with pride, "he holds the Chair of Magic."
+
+Even the names of Oxford or Cambridge, Harvard or Yale or
+Princeton, move some respect, and even yet in these unlearned
+days. What wonder then that the name of Saragossa heard on that
+lonely mountain awoke in Rodriguez some emotion of reverence and
+even awed Morano. As for the Chair of Magic, it was of all the
+royal endowments of that illustrious University the most honoured
+and dreaded.
+
+"At Saragossa!" Rodriguez muttered.
+
+"At Saragossa," the old man affirmed.
+
+Between that ancient citadel of learning and this most savage
+mountain appeared a gulf scarce to be bridged by thought.
+
+"The Professor rests in his mountain," the old man said, "because
+of a conjunction of the stars unfavourable to study, and his class
+have gone to their homes for many weeks." He bowed again and led
+on along that corridor of dismal stone. The others followed, and
+still as Rodriguez went that famous name Saragossa echoed within
+his mind.
+
+And then they came to a door set deep in the stone, and their
+guide opened it and they went in; and there was the Professor in a
+mystical hat and a robe of dim purple, seated with his back to
+them at a table, studying the ways of the stars. "Welcome, Don
+Rodriguez," said the Professor before he turned round; and then he
+rose, and with small steps backwards and sideways and many bows,
+he displayed all those formulae of politeness that Saragossa knew
+in the golden age and which her professors loved to execute. In
+later years they became more elaborate still, and afterwards were
+lost.
+
+Rodriguez replied rather by instinct than knowledge; he came of a
+house whose bows had never missed graceful ease and which had in
+some generations been a joy to the Court of Spain. Morano followed
+behind him; but his servile presence intruded upon that elaborate
+ceremony, and the Professor held up his hand, and Morano was held
+in mid stride as though the air had gripped him. There he stood
+motionless, having never felt magic before. And when the Professor
+had welcomed Rodriguez in a manner worthy of the dignity of the
+Chair that he held at Saragossa, he made an easy gesture and
+Morano was free again.
+
+"Master," said Morano to the Professor, as soon as he found he
+could move, "master, it looks like magic." Picture to yourself
+some yokel shown into the library of a professor of Greek at
+Oxford, taking down from a shelf one of the books of the Odyssey,
+and saying to the Professor, "It looks like Greek"!
+
+Rodriguez felt grieved by Morano's boorish ignorance. Neither he
+nor his host answered him.
+
+The Professor explained that he followed the mysteries dimly,
+owing to a certain aspect of Orion, and that therefore his class
+were gone to their homes and were hunting; and so he studied alone
+under unfavourable auspices. And once more he welcomed Rodriguez
+to his roof, and would command straw to be laid down for the man
+that Rodriguez had brought from the Inn of the Dragon and Knight;
+for he, the Professor, saw all things, though certain stars would
+hide everything.
+
+And when Rodriguez had appropriately uttered his thanks, he added
+with all humility and delicate choice of phrase a petition that he
+might be shown some mere rudiment of the studies for which that
+illustrious chair in Saragossa was famous. The Professor bowed
+again and, in accepting the well-rounded compliments that
+Rodriguez paid to the honoured post he occupied, he introduced
+himself by name. He had been once, he said, the Count of the
+Mountain, but when his astral studies had made him eminent and he
+had mastered the ways of the planet nearest the sun he took the
+title Magister Mercurii, and by this had long been known; but had
+now forsaken this title, great as it was, for a more glorious
+nomenclature, and was called in the Arabic language the Slave of
+Orion. When Rodriguez heard this he bowed very low.
+
+And now the Professor asked Rodriguez in which of the activities
+of life his interest lay; for the Chair of Magic at Saragossa, he
+said, was concerned with them all.
+
+"In war," said Rodriguez.
+
+And Morano unostentatiously rubbed his hands; for here was one, he
+thought, who would soon put his master on the right way, and
+matters would come to a head and they would find the wars. But far
+from concerning himself with the wars of that age, the Slave of
+Orion explained that as events came nearer they became grosser or
+more material, and that their grossness did not leave them until
+they were some while passed away; so that to one whose studies
+were with aetherial things, near events were opaque and dim. He
+had a window, he explained, through which Rodriguez should see
+clearly the ancient wars, while another window beside it looked on
+all wars of the future except those which were planned already or
+were coming soon to earth, and which were either invisible or seen
+dim as through mist.
+
+Rodriguez said that to be privileged to see so classical an
+example of magic would be to him both a delight and honour. Yet,
+as is the way of youth, he more desired to have a sight of the
+wars than he cared for all the learning of the Professor.
+
+And to him who held the Chair of Magic at Saragossa it was a
+precious thing that his windows could be made to show these
+marvels, while the guest to whom he was about to display these two
+gems of his learning was thinking of little but what he should see
+through the windows, and not at all of what spells, what midnight
+oil, what incantations, what witchcrafts, what lonely hours among
+bats, had gone to the gratification of his young curiosity. It is
+usually thus.
+
+The Professor rose: his cloak floated out from him as he left the
+chamber, and Rodriguez following where he guided saw, by the
+torchlight in the corridors, upon the dim purple border signs
+that, to his untutored ignorance of magic, were no more than hints
+of the affairs of the Zodiac. And if these signs were obscure it
+were better they were obscurer, for they dealt with powers that
+man needs not to possess, who has the whole earth to regulate and
+control; why then should he seek to govern the course of any star?
+
+And Morano followed behind them, hoping to be allowed to get a
+sight of the wars.
+
+They came to a room where two round windows were; each of them
+larger than the very largest plate, and of very thick glass
+indeed, and of a wonderful blue. The blue was like the blue of the
+Mediterranean at evening, when lights are in it both of ships and
+of sunset, and lights of harbours being lit one by one, and the
+light of Venus perhaps and about two other stars, so deeply did it
+stare and so twinkled, near its edges, with lights that were
+strange to that room, and so triumphed with its clear beauty over
+the night outside. No, it was more magical than the Mediterranean
+at evening, even though the peaks of the Esterels be purple and
+their bases melting in gold and the blue sea lying below them
+smiling at early stars: these windows were more mysterious than
+that; it was a more triumphant blue; it was like the Mediterranean
+seen with the eyes of Shelley, on a happy day in his youth, or
+like the sea round Western islands of fable seen by the fancy of
+Keats. They were no windows for any need of ours, unless our
+dreams be needs, unless our cries for the moon be urged by the
+same Necessity as makes us cry for bread. They were clearly
+concerned only with magic or poetry; though the Professor claimed
+that poetry was but a branch of his subject; and it was so
+regarded at Saragossa, where it was taught by the name of
+theoretical magic, while by the name of practical magic they
+taught dooms, brews, hauntings, and spells.
+
+The Professor stood before the left-hand window and pointed to its
+deep-blue centre. "Through this," he said, "we see the wars that
+were."
+
+Rodriguez looked into the deep-blue centre where the great bulge
+of the glass came out towards him; it was near to the edges where
+the glass seemed thinner that the little strange lights were
+dancing; Morano dared to tiptoe a little nearer. Rodriguez looked
+and saw no night outside. Just below and near to the window was
+white mist, and the dim lines and smoke of what may have been
+recent wars; but farther away on a plain of strangely vast
+dimensions he saw old wars that were. War after war he saw.
+Battles that long ago had passed into history and had been for
+many ages skilled, glorious and pleasant encounters he saw even
+now tumbling before him in their savage confusion and dirt. He saw
+a leader, long glorious in histories he had read, looking round
+puzzled, to see what was happening, and in a very famous fight
+that he had planned very well. He saw retreats that History called
+routs, and routs that he had seen History calling retreats. He saw
+men winning victories without knowing they had won. Never had man
+pried before so shamelessly upon History, or found her such a
+liar. With his eyes on the great blue glass Rodriguez forgot the
+room, forgot time, forgot his host and poor excited Morano, as he
+watched those famous fights.
+
+And now my reader wishes to know what he saw and how it was that
+he was able to see it.
+
+As regards the second, my reader will readily understand that the
+secrets of magic are very carefully guarded, and any smatterings
+of it that I may ever have come by I possess, for what they are
+worth, subjects to oaths and penalties at which even bad men
+shudder. My reader will be satisfied that even those intimate
+bonds between reader and writer are of no use to him here. I say
+him as though I had only male readers, but if my reader be a lady
+I leave the situation confidently to her intuition. As for the
+things he saw, of all of these I am at full liberty to write, and
+yet, my reader, they would differ from History's version: never a
+battle that Rodriguez saw on all the plain that swept away from
+that circular window, but History wrote differently. And now, my
+reader, the situation is this: who am I? History was a goddess
+among the Greeks, or is at least a distinguished personage,
+perhaps with a well-earned knighthood, and certainly with
+widespread recognition amongst the Right Kind of People. I have
+none of these things. Whom, then, would you believe?
+
+Yet I would lay my story confidently before you, my reader,
+trusting in the justice of my case and in your judicial
+discernment, but for one other thing. What will the Goddess Clio
+say, or the well-deserving knight, if I offend History? She has
+stated her case, Sir Bartimeus has written it, and then so late in
+the day I come with a different story, a truer but different
+story. What will they do? Reader, the future is dark, uncertain
+and long; I dare not trust myself to it if I offend History. Clio
+and Sir Bartimeus will make hay of my reputation; an innuendo
+here, a foolish fact there, they know how to do it, and not a soul
+will suspect the goddess of personal malice or the great historian
+of pique. Rodriguez gazed then through the deep blue window,
+forgetful of all around, on battles that had not all the elegance
+or neatness of which our histories so tidily tell. And as he gazed
+upon a merry encounter between two men on the fringe of an ancient
+fight he felt a touch on his shoulder and then almost a tug, and
+turning round beheld the room he was in. How long he had been
+absent from it in thought he did not know, but the Professor was
+still standing with folded arms where he had left him, probably
+well satisfied with the wonder that his most secret art had
+awakened in his guest. It was Morano who touched his shoulder,
+unable to hold back any longer his impatience to see the wars; his
+eyes as Rodriguez turned round were gazing at his master with dog-
+like wistfulness.
+
+The absurd eagerness of Morano, his uncouth touch on his shoulder,
+seemed only pathetic to Rodriguez. He looked at the Professor's
+face, the nose like a hawk's beak, the small eyes deep down beside
+it, dark of hue and dreadfully bright, the silent lips. He stood
+there uttering no actual prohibition, concerning which Rodriguez's
+eyes had sought; so, stepping aside from his window, Rodriguez
+beckoned Morano, who at once ran forward delighted to see those
+ancient wars.
+
+A slight look of scorn showed faint upon the Professor's face such
+as you may see anywhere when a master-craftsman perceives the gaze
+of the ignorant turned towards his particular subject. But he said
+no word, and soon speech would have been difficult, for the loud
+clamour of Morano filled the room: he had seen the wars and his
+ecstasies were ungoverned. As soon as he saw those fights he
+looked for the Infidels, for his religious mind most loved to see
+the Infidel slain. And if my reader discern or suppose some gulf
+between religion and the recent business of the Inn of the Dragon
+and Knight, Morano, if driven to admit any connection between
+murder and his daily bread, would have said, "All the more need
+then for God's mercy through the intercession of His most blessed
+Saints." But these words had never passed Morano's lips, for
+shrewd as he was in enquiry into any matter that he desired to
+know, his shrewdness was no less in avoiding enquiry where there
+might be something that he desired not to know, such as the origin
+of his wages as servant of the Inn of the Dragon and Knight, those
+delicate gold rings with settings empty of jewels.
+
+Morano soon recognized the Infidel by his dress, and after that no
+other wars concerned him. He slapped his thigh, he shouted
+encouragement, he howled vile words of abuse, partly because he
+believed that this foul abuse was rightly the due of the Infidel,
+and partly because he believed it delighted God.
+
+Rodriguez stood and watched, pleased at the huge joy of the simple
+man. The Slave of Orion stood watching in silence too, but who
+knows if he felt pleasure or any other emotion? Perhaps his mind
+was simply like ours; perhaps, as has been claimed by learned men
+of the best-informed period, that mind had some control upon the
+comet, even when farthest out from the paths we know. Morano
+turned round for a moment to Rodriguez:
+
+"Good wars, master, good wars," he said with a vast zest, and at
+once his head was back again at that calm blue window. In that
+flash of the head Rodriguez had seen his eyes, blue, round and
+bulging; the round man was like a boy who in some shop window has
+seen, unexpected, huge forbidden sweets. Clearly, in the war he
+watched things were going well for the Cross, for such cries came
+from Morano as "A pretty stroke," "There now, the dirty Infidel,"
+"Now see God's power shown," "Spare him not, good knight; spare
+him not," and many more, till, uttered faster and faster, they
+merged into mere clamorous rejoicing.
+
+But the battles beyond the blue window seemed to move fast, and
+now a change was passing across Morano's rejoicings. It was not
+that he swore more for the cause of the Cross, but brief,
+impatient, meaningless oaths slipped from him now; he was becoming
+irritable; a puzzled look, so far as Rodriguez could see, was
+settling down on his features. For a while he was silent except
+for the little, meaningless oaths. Then he turned round from the
+glass, his hands stretched out, his face full of urgent appeal.
+
+"Masters," he said, "God's enemy wins!"
+
+In answer to Morano's pitiful look Rodriguez' hand went to his
+sword-hilt; the Slave of Orion merely smiled with his lips; Morano
+stood there with his hands still stretched out, his face still all
+appeal, and something more for there was reproach in his eyes that
+men could tarry while the Cross was in danger and the Infidel
+lived. He did not know that it was all finished and over hundreds
+of years ago, a page of history upon which many pages were turned,
+and which lay as unalterable as the fate of some warm swift
+creature of early Eocene days over whose fossil today the strata
+lie long and silent.
+
+"But can nothing be done, master?" he said when Rodriguez told him
+this. And when Rodriguez failed him here, he turned away from the
+window. To him the Infidel were game, but to see them defeating
+Christian knights violated the deeps of his feelings.
+
+Morano sulky excited little more notice from his host and his
+master who had watched his rejoicings, and they seem to have
+forgotten this humble champion of Christendom. The Professor
+slightly bowed to Rodriguez and extended a graceful hand. He
+pointed to the other window.
+
+Reader, your friend shows you his collection of stamps, his
+fossils, his poems, or his luggage labels. One of them interests
+you, you look at it awhile, you are ready to go away: then your
+friend shows you another. This also must be seen; for your
+friend's collection is a precious thing; it is that point upon
+huge Earth on which his spirit has lit, on which it rests, on
+which it shelters even (who knows from what storms?). To slight it
+were to weaken such hold as his spirit has, in its allotted time,
+upon this sphere. It were like breaking the twig of a plant upon
+which a butterfly rests, and on some stormy day and late in the
+year.
+
+Rodriguez felt all this dimly, but no less surely; and went to the
+other window.
+
+Below the window were those wars that were soon coming to Spain,
+hooded in mist and invisible. In the centre of the window swam as
+profound a blue, dwindling to paler splendour at the edge, the
+wandering lights were as lovely, as in the other window just to
+the left; but in the view from the right-hand window how sombre a
+difference. A bare yard separated the two. Through the window to
+the left was colour, courtesy, splendour; there was Death as least
+disguising himself, well cloaked, taking mincing steps, bowing,
+wearing a plume in his hat and a decent mask. In the right-hand
+window all the colours were fading, war after war they grew
+dimmer; and as the colours paled Death's sole purpose showed
+clearer. Through the beautiful left-hand window were killings to
+be seen, and less mercy than History supposes, yet some of the
+fighters were merciful, and mercy was sometimes a part of Death's
+courtly pose, which went with the cloak and the plume. But in the
+other window through that deep, beautiful blue Rodriguez saw Man
+make a new ally, an ally who was only cruel and strong and had no
+purpose but killing, who had no pretences or pose, no mask and no
+manner, but was only the slave of Death and had no care but for
+his business. He saw it grow bigger and stronger. Heart it had
+none, but he saw its cold steel core scheming methodical plans and
+dreaming always destruction. Before it faded men and their fields
+and their houses. Rodriguez saw the machine.
+
+Many a proud invention of ours that Rodriguez saw raging on that
+ruinous plain he might have anticipated, but not for all Spain
+would he have done so: it was for the sake of Spain that he was
+silent about much that he saw through that window. As he looked
+from war to war he saw almost the same men fighting, men with
+always the same attitude to the moment and with similar dim
+conception of larger, vaguer things; grandson differed
+imperceptibly from grandfather; he saw them fight sometimes
+mercifully, sometimes murderously, but in all the wars beyond that
+twinkling window he saw the machine spare nothing.
+
+Then he looked farther, for the wars that were farthest from him
+in time were farther away from the window. He looked farther and
+saw the ruins of Peronne. He saw them all alone with their doom at
+night, all drenched in white moonlight, sheltering huge darkness
+in their stricken hollows. Down the white street, past darkness
+after darkness as he went by the gaping rooms that the moon left
+mourning alone, Rodriguez saw a captain going back to the wars in
+that far-future time, who turned his head a moment as he passed,
+looking Rodriguez in the face, and so went on through the ruins to
+find a floor on which to lie down for the night. When he was gone
+the street was all alone with disaster, and moonlight pouring
+down, and the black gloom in the houses.
+
+Rodriguez lifted his eyes and glanced from city to city, to
+Albert, Bapaume, and Arras, his gaze moved over a plain with its
+harvest of desolation lying forlorn and ungathered, lit by the
+flashing clouds and the moon and peering rockets. He turned from
+the window and wept.
+
+The deep round window glowed with serene blue glory. It seemed a
+foolish thing to weep by that beautiful glass. Morano tried to
+comfort him. That calm, deep blue, he felt, and those little
+lights, surely, could hurt no one.
+
+What had Rodriguez seen? Morano asked. But that Rodriguez would
+not answer, and told no man ever after what he had seen through
+that window.
+
+The Professor stood silent still: he had no comfort to offer;
+indeed his magical wisdom had found none for the world.
+
+You wonder perhaps why the Professor did not give long ago to the
+world some of these marvels that are the pride of our age. Reader,
+let us put aside my tale for a moment to answer this. For all the
+darkness of his sinister art there may well have been some good in
+the Slave of Orion; and any good there was, and mere particle
+even, would surely have spared the world many of those inventions
+that our age has not spared it. Blame not the age, it is now too
+late to stop; it is in the grip of inventions now, and has to go
+on; we cannot stop content with mustard-gas; it is the age of
+Progress, and our motto is Onwards. And if there was no good in
+this magical man, then may it not have been he who in due course,
+long after he himself was safe from life, caused our inventions to
+be so deadly divulged? Some evil spirit has done it, then why not
+he?
+
+He stood there silent: let us return to our story.
+
+Perhaps the efforts of poor clumsy Morano to comfort him cheered
+Rodriguez and sent him back to the window, perhaps he turned from
+them to find comfort of his own; but, however he came by it, he
+had a hope that this was a passing curse that had come on the
+world, whose welfare he cared for whether he lived or died, and
+that looking a little farther into the future he would see Mother
+Earth smiling and her children happy again. So he looked through
+the deep-blue luminous window once more, beyond the battles we
+know. From this he turned back shuddering.
+
+Again he saw the Professor smile with his lips, though whether at
+his own weakness, or whether with cynical mirth at the fate of the
+world, Rodriguez could not say.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FOURTH CHRONICLE
+
+HOW HE CAME TO THE MOUNTAINS OF THE SUN
+
+
+The Professor said that in curiosity alone had been found the
+seeds of all that is needful for our damnation. Nevertheless, he
+said, if Rodriguez cared to see more of his mighty art the
+mysteries of Saragossa were all at his guest's disposal.
+
+Rodriguez, sad and horrified though he was, forgot none of his
+courtesy. He thanked the Professor and praised the art of
+Saragossa, but his faith in man and his hope for the world having
+been newly disappointed, he cared little enough for the things we
+should care to see or for any of the amusements that are usually
+dear to youth.
+
+"I shall be happy to see anything, senor," he said to the Slave of
+Orion, "that is further from our poor Earth, and to study therein
+and admire your famous art."
+
+The Professor bowed. He drew small curtains over the windows,
+matching his cloak. Morano sought a glimpse through the right-hand
+window before the curtains covered it. Rodriguez held him back.
+Enough had been seen already, he thought, through that window for
+the peace of mind of the world: but he said no word to Morano. He
+held him by the arm, and the Professor covered the windows. When
+the little mauve curtains were drawn it seemed to Rodriguez that
+the windows behind them disappeared and were there no more; but
+this he only guessed from uncertain indications.
+
+Then the Professor drew forth his wand and went to his cupboard of
+wonder. Thence he brought condiments, oils, and dews of amazement.
+These he poured into a vessel that was in the midst of the room, a
+bowl of agate standing alone on a table. He lit it and it all
+welled up in flame, a low broad flame of the colour of pale
+emerald. Over this he waved his wand, which was of exceeding
+blackness. Morano watched as children watch the dancer, who goes
+from village to village when spring is come, with some new dance
+out of Asia or some new song.[Footnote: He doesn't, but why
+shouldn't he?] Rodriguez sat and waited. The Professor explained
+that to leave this Earth alive, or even dead, was prohibited to
+our bodies, unless to a very few, whose names were hidden. Yet the
+spirits of men could by incantation be liberated, and being
+liberated, could be directed on journeys by such minds as had that
+power passed down to them from of old. Such journeys, he said,
+were by no means confined by the hills of Earth. "The Saints,"
+exclaimed Morano, "guard us utterly!" But Rodriguez smiled a
+little. His faith was given to the Saints of Heaven. He wondered
+at their wonders, he admired their miracles, he had little faith
+to spare for other marvels; in fact he did not believe the Slave
+of Orion.
+
+"Do you desire such a journey?" said the Professor.
+
+"It will delight me," answered Rodriguez, "to see this example of
+your art."
+
+"And you?" he said to Morano.
+
+The question seemed to alarm the placid Morano, but "I follow my
+master," he said.
+
+At once the Professor stretched out his ebony wand, calling the
+green flame higher. Then he put out his hands over the flame,
+without the wand, moving them slowly with constantly tremulous
+fingers. And all at once they heard him begin to speak. His deep
+voice flowed musically while he scarcely seemed to be speaking but
+seemed only to be concerned with moving his hands. It came soft,
+as though blown faint from fabulous valleys, illimitably far from
+the land of Spain. It seemed full not so much of magic as mere
+sleep, either sleep in an unknown country of alien men, or sleep
+in a land dreamed sleeping a long while since. As the travellers
+heard it they thought of things far away, of mythical journeys and
+their own earliest years.
+
+They did not know what he said or what language he used. At first
+Rodriguez thought Moorish, then he deemed it some secret language
+come down from magicians of old, while Morano merely wondered; and
+then they were lulled by the rhythm of those strange words, and so
+enquired no more. Rodriguez pictured some sad wandering angel,
+upon some mountain-peak of African lands, resting a moment and
+talking to the solitudes, telling the lonely valley the mysteries
+of his home. While lulled though Morano was he gave up his
+alertness uneasily. All the while the green flame flooded upwards:
+all the while the tremulous fingers made curious shadows. The
+shadow seemed to run to Rodriguez and beckon him thence: even
+Morano felt them calling. Rodriguez closed his eyes. The voice and
+the Moorish spells made now a more haunting melody: they were now
+like a golden organ on undiscoverable mountains. Fear came on
+Morano at the thought: who had power to speak like this? He
+grasped Rodriguez by the wrist. "Master!" he said, but at that
+moment on one of those golden spells the spirit of Rodriguez
+drifted away from his body, and out of the greenish light of the
+curious room; unhampered by weight, or fatigue, or pain, or sleep;
+and it rose above the rocks and over the mountain, an unencumbered
+spirit: and the spirit of Morano followed.
+
+The mountain dwindled at once; the Earth swept out all round them
+and grew larger, and larger still, and then began to dwindle. They
+saw then that they were launched upon some astounding journey.
+Does my reader wonder they saw when they had no eyes? They saw as
+they had never seen before, with sight beyond what they had ever
+thought to be possible. Our eyes gather in light, and with the
+little rays of light that they bring us we gather a few images of
+things as we suppose them to be. Pardon me, reader, if I call them
+things as we suppose them to be; call them by all means Things As
+They Really Are, if you wish. These images then, this tiny little
+brainful that we gather from the immensities, are all brought in
+by our eyesight upside-down, and the brain corrects them again;
+and so, and so we know something. An oculist will tell you how it
+all works. He may admit it is all a little clumsy, or for the
+dignity of his profession he may say it is not at all. But be this
+as it may, our eyes are but barriers between us and the
+immensities. All our five senses that grope a little here and
+touch a little there, and seize, and compare notes, and get a
+little knowledge sometimes, they are only barriers between us and
+what there is to know. Rodriguez and Morano were outside these
+barriers. They saw without the imperfections of eyesight; they
+heard on that journey what would have deafened ears; they went
+through our atmosphere unburned by speed, and were unchilled in
+the bleak of the outer spaces. Thus freed of the imperfections of
+the body they sped, no less upon a terrible journey, whose
+direction as yet Rodriguez only began to fear.
+
+They had seen the stars pale rapidly and then the flash of dawn.
+The Sun rushed up and at once began to grow larger. Earth, with
+her curved sides still diminishing violently, was soon a small
+round garden in blue and filmy space, in which mountains were
+planted. And still the Sun was growing wider and wider. And now
+Rodriguez, though he knew nothing of Sun or planets, perceived the
+obvious truth of their terrible journey: they were heading
+straight for the Sun. But the spirit of Morano was merely
+astounded; yet, being free of the body he suffered none of those
+inconveniences that perturbation may bring to us: spirits do not
+gasp, or palpitate, or weaken, or sicken.
+
+The dwindling Earth seemed now no more than the size of some
+unmapped island seen from a mountain-top, an island a hundred
+yards or so across, looking like a big table.
+
+Speed is comparative: compared to sound, their pace was beyond
+comparison; nor could any modern projectile attain any velocity
+comparable to it; even the speed of explosion was slow to it. And
+yet for spirits they were moving slowly, who being independent of
+all material things, travel with such velocities as that, for
+instance, of thought. But they were controlled by one still
+dwelling on Earth, who used material things, and the material that
+the Professor was using to hurl them upon their journey was light,
+the adaptation of which to this purpose he had learned at
+Saragossa. At the pace of light they were travelling towards the
+Sun.
+
+They crossed the path of Venus, far from where Venus then was, so
+that she scarcely seemed larger to them; Earth was but little
+bigger than the Evening Star, looking dim in that monstrous
+daylight.
+
+Crossing the path of Mercury, Mercury appeared huger than our
+Moon, an object weirdly unnatural; and they saw ahead of them the
+terrific glare in which Mercury basks, from a Sun whose withering
+orb had more than doubled its width since they came from the hills
+of Earth. And after this the Sun grew terribly larger, filling the
+centre of the sky, and spreading and spreading and spreading. It
+was now that they saw what would have dazzled eyes, would have
+burned up flesh and would have shrivelled every protection that
+our scientists' ingenuity could have devised even today. To speak
+of time there is meaningless. There is nothing in the empty space
+between the Sun and Mercury with which time is at all concerned.
+Far less is there meaning in time wherever the spirits of men are
+under stress. A few minutes' bombardment in a trench, a few hours
+in a battle, a few weeks' travelling in a trackless country; these
+minutes, these hours, these weeks can never be few.
+
+Rodriguez and Morano had been travelling about six or seven
+minutes, but it seems idle to say so.
+
+And then the Sun began to fill the whole sky in front of them. And
+in another minute, if minutes had any meaning, they were heading
+for a boundless region of flame that, left and right, was
+everywhere, and now towered above them, and went below them into a
+flaming abyss.
+
+And now Morano spoke to Rodriguez. He thought towards him, and
+Rodriguez was aware of his thinking: it is thus that spirits
+communicate.
+
+"Master," he said, "when it was all spring in Spain, years ago
+when I was thin and young, twenty years gone at least; and the
+butterflies were come, and song was everywhere; there came a maid
+bare-footed over a stream, walking through flowers, and all to
+pluck the anemones." How fair she seemed even now, how bright that
+far spring day. Morano told Rodriguez not with his blundering
+lips: they were closed and resting deeply millions of miles away:
+he told him as spirits tell. And in that clear communication
+Rodriguez saw all that shone in Morano's memory, the grace of the
+young girl's ankles, the thrill of Spring, the anemones larger and
+brighter than anemones ever were, the hawks still in clear sky;
+earth happy and heaven blue, and the dreams of youth between. You
+would not have said, had you seen Morano's coarse fat body, asleep
+in a chair in the Professor's room, that his spirit treasured such
+delicate, nymph-like, pastoral memories as now shone clear to
+Rodriguez. No words the blunt man had ever been able to utter had
+ever hinted that he sometimes thought like a dream of pictures by
+Watteau. And now in that awful space before the power of the
+terrible Sun, spirit communed with spirit, and Rodriguez saw the
+beauty of that far day, framed all about the beauty of one young
+girl, just as it had been for years in Morano's memory. How shall
+I tell with words what spirit sang wordless to spirit? We poets
+may compete with each other in words; but when spirits give up the
+purest gold of their store, that has shone far down the road of
+their earthly journey, cheering tired hearts and guiding mortal
+feet, our words shall barely interpret.
+
+Love, coming long ago over flowers in Spain, found Morano; words
+did not tell the story, words cannot tell it; as a lake reflects a
+cloud in the blue of heaven, so Rodriguez understood and felt and
+knew this memory out of the days of Morano's youth. "And so,
+master," said Morano, "I sinned, and would indeed repent, and yet
+even now at this last dread hour I cannot abjure that day; and
+this is indeed Hell, as the good father said."
+
+Rodriguez tried to comfort Morano with such knowledge as he had of
+astronomy, if knowledge it could be called. Indeed, if he had
+known anything he would have perplexed Morano more, and his little
+pieces of ignorance were well adapted for comfort. But Morano had
+given up hope, having long been taught to expect this very fire:
+his spirit was no wiser than it had been on Earth, it was merely
+freed of the imperfections of the five senses and so had
+observation and expression beyond those of any artist the world
+has known. This was the natural result of being freed of the body;
+but he was not suddenly wiser; and so, as he moved towards this
+boundless flame, he expected every moment to see Satan charge out
+to meet him: and having no hope for the future he turned to the
+past and fondled the memory of that one spring day. His was a
+backsliding, unrepentant spirit.
+
+As that monstrous sea of flame grew ruthlessly larger Rodriguez
+felt no fear, for spirits have no fear of material things: but
+Morano feared. He feared as spirits fear spiritual things; he
+thought he neared the home of vast spirits of evil and that the
+arena of conflict was eternity. He feared with a fear too great to
+be borne by bodies. Perhaps the fat body that slept on a chair on
+earth was troubled in dreams by some echo of that fear that
+gripped the spirit so sorely. And it may be from such far fears
+that all our nightmares come.
+
+When they had travelled nearly ten minutes from Earth and were
+about to pass into the midst of the flame, that magician who
+controlled their journey halted them suddenly in Space, among the
+upper mountain-peaks of the Sun. There they hovered as the clouds
+hover that leave their companions and drift among crags of the
+Alps: below them those awful mountains heaved and thundered. All
+Atlas, and Teneriffe, and lonely Kenia might have lain amongst
+them unnoticed. As often as the earthquake rocked their bases it
+loosened from near their summits wild avalanches of gold that
+swept down their flaming slopes with unthinkable tumult. As they
+watched, new mountains rode past them, crowned with their
+frightful flames; for, whether man knew it or not, the Sun was
+rotating, but the force of its gravity that swung the planets had
+no grip upon spirits, who were held by the power of that
+tremendous spell that the Professor had learned one midnight at
+Saragossa from one of that dread line who have their secrets from
+a source that we do not know in a distant age.
+
+There is always something tremendous in the form of great
+mountains; but these swept by, not only huger than anything Earth
+knows, but troubled by horrible commotions, as though overtaken in
+flight by some ceaseless calamity.
+
+Rodriguez and Morano, as they looked at them, forgetting the
+gardens of Earth, forgetting Spring and Summer and the sweet
+beneficence of sunshine, felt that the purpose of Creation was
+evil! So shocking a thought may well astound us here, where green
+hills slope to lawns or peer at a peaceful sea; but there among
+the flames of those dreadful peaks the Sun seemed not the giver of
+joy and colour and life, but only a catastrophe huger than
+everlasting war, a centre of hideous violence and ruin and anger
+and terror. There came by mountains of copper burning everlasting,
+hurling up to unthinkable heights their mass of emerald flame. And
+mountains of iron raged by and mountains of salt, quaking and
+thundering and clothed with their colours, the iron always scarlet
+and the salt blue. And sometimes there came by pinnacles a
+thousand miles high that from base to summit were fire, mountains
+of pure flame that had no other substance. And these explosive
+mountains, born of thunder and earthquake, hurling down avalanches
+the size of our continents, and drawing upward out of the deeps of
+the Sun new material for splendour and horror, this roaring waste,
+this extravagant destruction, were necessary for every tint that
+our butterflies wear on their wings. Without those flaming ranges
+of mountains of iron they would have no red to show; even the
+poppy could have no red for her petals: without the flames that
+were blasting the mountains of salt there could be no answering
+blue in any wing, or one blue flower for all the bees of Earth:
+without the nightmare light of those frightful canyons of copper
+that awed the two spirits watching their ceaseless ruin, the very
+leaves of the woods we love would be without their green with
+which to welcome Spring; for from the flames of the various metals
+and wonders that for ever blaze in the Sun, our sunshine gets all
+its colours that it conveys to us almost unseen, and thence the
+wise little insects and patient flowers softly draw the gay tints
+that they glory in; there is nowhere else to get them.
+
+And yet to Rodriguez and Morano all that they saw seemed wholly
+and hideously evil.
+
+How long they may have watched there they tried to guess
+afterwards, but as they looked on those terrific scenes they had
+no way to separate days from minutes: nothing about them seemed to
+escape destruction, and time itself seemed no calmer than were
+those shuddering mountains.
+
+Then the thundering ranges passed; and afterwards there came a
+gleaming mountain, one huge and lonely peak, seemingly all of
+gold. Had our whole world been set beside it and shaped as it was
+shaped, that golden mountain would yet have towered above it: it
+would have taken our moon as well to reach that flashing peak. It
+rode on toward them in its golden majesty, higher than all the
+flames, save now and then when some wild gas seemed to flee from
+the dread earthquakes of the Sun, and was overtaken in the height
+by fire, even above that mountain.
+
+As that mass of gold that was higher than all the world drew near
+to Rodriguez and Morano they felt its unearthly menace; and though
+it could not overcome their spirits they knew there was a hideous
+terror about it. It was in its awful scale that its terror lurked
+for any creature of our planet. Though they could not quake or
+tremble they felt that terror. The mountain dwarfed Earth.
+
+Man knows his littleness, his own mountains remind him; many
+countries are small, and some nations: but the dreams of Man make
+up for our faults and failings, for the brevity of our lives, for
+the narrowness of our scope; they leap over boundaries and are
+away and away. But this great mountain belittled the world and
+all: who gazed on it knew all his dreams to be puny. Before this
+mountain Man seemed a trivial thing, and Earth, and all the dreams
+Man had of himself and his home.
+
+The golden mass drew opposite those two watchers and seemed to
+challenge with its towering head the pettiness of the tiny world
+they knew. And then the whole gleaming mountain gave one shudder
+and fell into the awful plains of the Sun. Straight down before
+Rodriguez and Morano it slipped roaring, till the golden peak was
+gone, and the molten plain closed over it; and only ripples
+remained, the size of Europe, as when a tumbling river strikes the
+rocks of its bed and on its surface heaving circles widen and
+disappear. And then, as though this horror left nothing more to be
+shown, they felt the Professor beckon to them from Earth.
+
+Over the plains of the Sun a storm was sweeping in gusts of
+howling flame as they felt the Professor's spell drawing them
+home. For the magnitude of that storm there are no words in use
+among us; its velocity, if expressed in figures, would have no
+meaning; its heat was immeasurable. Suffice it to say that if such
+a tempest could have swept over Earth for a second, both the poles
+would have boiled. The travellers left it galloping over that
+plain, rippled from underneath by the restless earthquake and
+whipped into flaming foam by the force of the storm. The Sun
+already was receding from them, already growing smaller. Soon the
+storm seemed but a cloud of light sweeping over the empty plain,
+like a murderous mourner rushing swiftly away from the grave of
+that mighty mountain.
+
+And now the Professor's spell gripped them in earnest: rapidly the
+Sun grew smaller. As swiftly as he had sent them upon that journey
+he was now drawing them home. They overtook thunders that they had
+heard already, and passed them, and came again to the silent
+spaces which the thunders of the Sun are unable to cross, so that
+even Mercury is undisturbed by them.
+
+I have said that spirits neither fade nor weary. But a great
+sadness was on them; they felt as men feel who come whole away
+from periods of peril. They had seen cataclysms too vast for our
+imagination, and a mournfulness and a satiety were upon them. They
+could have gazed at one flower for days and needed no other
+experience, as a wounded man may be happy staring at the flame of
+a candle.
+
+Crossing the paths of Mercury and Venus, they saw that these
+planets had not appreciably moved, and Rodriguez, who knew that
+planets wander in the night, guessed thereby that they had not
+been absent from Earth for many hours.
+
+They rejoiced to see the Sun diminishing steadily. Only for a
+moment as they started their journey had they seen that solar
+storm rushing over the plains of the Sun; but now it appeared to
+hang halted in its mid anger, as though blasting one region
+eternally.
+
+Moving on with the pace of light, they saw Earth, soon after
+crossing the path of Venus, beginning to grow larger than a star.
+Never had home appeared more welcome to wanderers, who see their
+house far off, returning home.
+
+And as Earth grew larger, and they began to see forms that seemed
+like seas and mountains, they looked for their own country, but
+could not find it: for, travelling straight from the Sun, they
+approached that part of the world that was then turned towards it,
+and were heading straight for China, while Spain lay still in
+darkness.
+
+But when they came near Earth and its mountains were clear, then
+the Professor drew them across the world, into the darkness and
+over Spain; so that those two spirits ended their marvellous
+journey much as the snipe ends his, a drop out of heaven and a
+swoop low over marshes. So they came home, while Earth seemed
+calling to them with all her voices; with memories, sights and
+scents, and little sounds; calling anxiously, as though they had
+been too long away and must be home soon. They heard a cock crow
+on the edge of the night; they heard more little sounds than words
+can say; only the organ can hint at them. It was Earth calling.
+For, talk as we may of our dreams that transcend this sphere, or
+our hopes that build beyond it, Mother Earth has yet a mighty hold
+upon us; and her myriad sounds were blending in one cry now,
+knowing that it was late and that these two children of hers were
+nearly lost. For our spirits that sometimes cross the path of the
+angels, and on rare evenings hear a word of their talk, and have
+brief equality with the Powers of Light, have the duty also of
+moving fingers and toes, which freeze if our proud spirits forget
+their task for too long.
+
+And just as Earth was despairing they reached the Professor's
+mountain and entered the room in which their bodies were.
+
+Blue and cold and ugly looked the body of Morano, but for all its
+pallor there was beauty in the young face of Rodriguez.
+
+The Professor stood before them as he had stood when their spirits
+left, with the table between him and the bodies, and the bowl on
+the table which held the green flame, now low and flickering
+desperately, which the Professor watched as it leaped and failed,
+with an air of anxiety that seemed to pinch his thin features.
+
+With an impatience strange to him he waved a swift hand towards
+each of the two bodies where they sat stiff, illumined by the last
+of the green light; and at those rapid gestures the travellers
+returned to their habitations.
+
+They seemed to be just awakening out of deep sleep. Again they saw
+the Professor standing before them. But they saw him only with
+blinking eyes, they saw him only as eyes can see, guessing at his
+mind from the lines of his face, at his thoughts from the
+movements of his hands, guessing as men guess, blindly: only a
+moment before they had known him utterly. Now they were dazed and
+forgetting: slow blood began to creep again to their toes and to
+come again to its place under fingernails: it came with intense
+pain: they forgot their spirits. Then all the woes of Earth
+crowded their minds at once, so that they wished to weep, as
+infants weep.
+
+The Professor gave this mood time to change, as change it
+presently did. For the warm blood came back and lit their cheeks,
+and a tingling succeeded the pain in their fingers and toes, and a
+mild warmth succeeded the tingling: their thoughts came back to
+the things of every day, to mundane things and the affairs of the
+body. Therein they rejoiced, and Morano no less than Rodriguez;
+though it was a coarse and common body that Morano's spirit
+inhabited. And when the Professor saw that the first sorrow of
+Earth, which all spirits feel when they land here, had passed
+away, and that they were feeling again the joy of mundane things,
+only then did he speak.
+
+"Senor," he said, "beyond the path of Mars run many worlds that I
+would have you know. The greatest of these is Jupiter, towards
+whom all that follow my most sacred art show reverent affection.
+The smallest are those that sometimes strike our world, flaming
+all green upon November nights, and are even as small as apples."
+He spoke of our world with a certain air and a pride, as though,
+through virtue of his transcendent art, the world were only his.
+"The world that we name Argola," he said, "is far smaller than
+Spain and, being invisible from Earth, is only known to the few
+who have spoken to spirits whose wanderings have surpassed the
+path of Mars. Nearly half of Argola you shall find covered with
+forests, which though very dense are no deeper than moss, and the
+elephants in them are not larger than beetles. You shall see many
+wonders of smallness in this world of Argola, which I desire in
+especial to show you, since it is the orb with which we who study
+the Art are most familiar, of all the worlds that the vulgar have
+not known. It is indeed the prize of our traffic in those things
+that far transcend the laws that have forbidden them."
+
+And as he said this the green flame in the bowl before him died,
+and he moved towards his cupboard of wonder. Rodriguez hastily
+thanked the Professor for his great courtesy in laying bare before
+him secrets that the centuries hid, and then he referred to his
+own great unworthiness, to the lateness of the hour, to the
+fatigue of the Professor, and to the importance to Learning of
+adequate rest to refresh his illustrious mind. And all that he
+said the Professor parried with bows, and drew enchantments from
+his cupboard of wonder to replenish the bowl on the table. And
+Rodriguez saw that he was in the clutch of a collector, one who
+having devoted all his days to a hobby will exhibit his treasures
+to the uttermost, and that the stars that magic knows were no less
+to the Professor than all the whatnots that a man collects and
+insists on showing to whomsoever enters his house. He feared some
+terrible journey, perhaps some bare escape; for though no material
+thing can quite encompass a spirit, he knew not what wanderers he
+might not meet in lonely spaces beyond the path of Mars. So when
+his last polite remonstrance failed, being turned aside with a
+pleasant phrase and a smile from the grim lips, and looking at
+Morano he saw that he shared his fears, then he determined to show
+whatever resistance were needed to keep himself and Morano in this
+old world that we know, or that youth at least believes that it
+knows.
+
+He watched the Professor return with his packets of wonder; dust
+from a fallen star, phials of tears of lost lovers, poison and
+gold out of elf-land, and all manner of things. But the moment
+that he put them into the bowl Rodriguez' hand flew to his sword-
+hilt. He heaved up his elbow, but no sword came forth, for it lay
+magnetised to its scabbard by the grip of a current of magic. When
+Rodriguez saw this he knew not what to do.
+
+The Professor went on pouring into the bowl. He added an odour
+distilled out of dream-roses, three drops from the gall-bladder of
+a fabulous beast, and a little dust that had been man. More too he
+added, so that my reader might wonder were I to tell him all; yet
+it is not so easy to free our spirits from the gross grip of our
+bodies. Wonder not then, my reader, if the Professor exerted
+strange powers. And all the while Morano was picking at a nail
+that fastened on the handle to his frying-pan.
+
+And just as the last few mysteries were shaken into the bowl,--and
+there were two among them of which even Asia is ignorant,--just as
+the dews were blended with the powers in a grey-green sinister
+harmony, Morano untwisted his nail and got the handle loose.
+
+The Professor kindled the mixture in the bowl; again green flame
+arose, again that voice of his began to call to their spirits, and
+its beauty and the power of its spell were as of some fallen
+angel. The spirit of Rodriguez was nearly passing helplessly forth
+again on some frightful journey, when Morano losed his scabbard
+and sword from its girdle and tied the handle of his frying-pan
+across it a little below the hilt with a piece of string. Across
+the table the Professor intoned his spell, across a narrow table,
+but it seemed to come from the far side of the twilight, a
+twilight red and golden in long layers, of an evening wonderfully
+long ago. It seemed to take its music out of the lights that it
+flowed through and to call Rodriguez from immediately far away,
+with a call which it were sacrilege to refuse, and anguish even,
+and hard toil such as there was no strength to do. And then Morano
+held up the sword in its scabbard with the handle of the frying-
+pan tied across. Rodriguez, disturbed by a stammer in the spell,
+looked up and saw the Professor staring at the sword where Morano
+held it up before his face in the green light of the flame from
+the bowl. He did not seem like a fallen angel now. His spell had
+stopped. He seemed like a professor who had forgotten the theme of
+his lecture, while the class waits. For Morano was holding up the
+sign of the cross.
+
+"You have betrayed me!" shouted the Slave of Orion: the green
+flame died, and he strode out of the room, his purple cloak
+floating behind him.
+
+"Master," Morano said, "it was always good against magic."
+
+The sword was loose in the scabbard as Rodriguez took it back;
+there was no longer a current of magic gripping the steel.
+
+A little uneasily Rodriguez thanked Morano: he was not sure if
+Morano had behaved as a guest's servant should. But when he
+thought of the Professor's terrible spells, which had driven them
+to the awful crags of the sun, and might send them who knows where
+to hob-nob with who knows what, his second thoughts perceived that
+Morano was right to cut short those arts that the Slave of Orion
+loved, even by so extreme a step: and he praised Morano as his
+ready shrewdness deserved.
+
+"We were very nearly too late back from that outing, master,"
+remarked Morano.
+
+"How know you that?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"This old body knew," said Morano. "Those heart-thumpings, this
+warmness, and all the things that make a fat body comfortable,
+they were stopping, master, they were spoiling, they were getting
+cold and strange: I go no more errands for that senor."
+
+A certain diffidence about criticising his host even now; and a
+very practical vein that ran through his nature, now showing
+itself in anxiety for a bed at so late an hour; led Rodriguez to
+change the subject. He wanted that aged butler, yet dare not ring
+the bell; for he feared lest with all the bells there might be in
+use that frightful practice that he had met by the outer door, a
+chain connected with some hideous hook that gave anguish to
+something in the basement whenever one touched the handle, so that
+the menials of that grim Professor were shrilly summoned by
+screams. And therefore Rodriguez sought counsel of Morano, who
+straightway volunteered to find the butler's quarters, by a
+certain sense that he had of the fitness of things: and forth he
+went, but would not leave the room without the scabbard and the
+handle of the frying-pan lashed to it, which he bore high before
+him in both his hands as though he were leading some austere
+procession. And even so he returned with that aged man the butler,
+who led them down dim corridors of stone; but, though he showed
+the way, Morano would go in front, still holding up that scabbard
+and handle before him, while Rodriguez held the bare sword. And so
+they came to a room lit by the flare of one candle, which their
+guide told them the Professor had prepared for his guest. In the
+vastness of it was a great bed. Shadows and a whir as of wings
+passed out of the door as they entered. "Bats," said the ancient
+guide. But Morano believed he had routed powers of evil with the
+handle of his frying-pan and his master's scabbard. Who could say
+what they were in such a house, where bats and evil spirits
+sheltered perennially from the brooms of the just? Then that
+ancient man with the lips of some woodland thing departed, and
+Rodriguez went to the great bed. On a pile of straw that had been
+cast into the room Morano lay down across the door, setting the
+scabbard upright in a rat-hole near his head, while Rodriguez lay
+down with the bare sword in his hand. There was only one door in
+the room, and this Morano guarded. Windows there were, but they
+were shuttered with raw oak of enormous thickness. He had already
+enquired with his sword behind the velvet curtains. He felt secure
+in the bulk of Morano across the only door, at least from
+creatures of this world: and Morano feared no longer either spirit
+or spell, believing that he had vanquished the Professor with his
+symbol, and all such allies as he may have had here or elsewhere.
+But not thus easily do we overcome the powers of evil.
+
+A step was heard such as man walks with at the close of his later
+years, coming along the corridor of stone; and they knew it for
+the Professor's butler returning. The latch of the door trembled
+and lifted, and the great oak door bumped slowly against Morano,
+who arose grumbling, and the old man appeared.
+
+"The Professor," he said, while Morano watched him grudgingly,
+"returns with all his household to Saragossa at once, to resume
+those studies for which his name resounds, a certain conjunction
+of the stars having come favourably."
+
+Even Morano doubted that so suddenly the courses of the stars,
+which he deemed to be gradual, should have altered from antagonism
+towards the Professor's art into a favourable aspect. Rodriguez
+sleepily acknowledged the news and settled himself to sleep, still
+sword in hand, when the servitor repeated with as much emphasis as
+his aged voice could utter, "With all his household, senor."
+
+"Yes," muttered Rodriguez. "Farewell."
+
+And repeating again, "He takes his household with him," the old
+man shuffled back from the room and hesitatingly closed the door.
+Before the sound of his slow footsteps had failed to reach the
+room Morano was asleep under his cross. Rodriguez still watched
+for a while the shadows leaping and shuddering away from the
+candle, riding over the ceiling, striding hugely along the walls,
+towards him and from him, as draughts swayed the ruddy flame;
+then, gripping his sword still firmer in his hand, as though that
+could avail against magic, he fell into the sleep of tired men.
+
+No sound disturbed Rodriguez or Morano till both awoke in late
+morning upon the rocks of the mountain. The sun had climbed over
+the crags and now shone on their faces. Rodriguez was still lying
+with his sword gripped in his hand, but the cross had fallen by
+Morano and now lay on the rocks beside him with the handle of the
+frying-pan still tied in its place by string. A young, wild,
+woodland squirrel gambolled near, though there were no woods for
+it anywhere within sight: it leaped and played as though rejoicing
+in youth, with such merriment as though youth had but come to it
+newly or been lost and restored again.
+
+All over the mountain they looked but there was no house, nor any
+sign of dwelling of man or spirit.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FIFTH CHRONICLE
+
+HOW HE RODE IN THE TWILIGHT AND SAW SERAFINA
+
+
+Rodriguez, who loved philosophy, turned his mind at once to the
+journey that lay before him, deciding which was the north; for he
+knew that it was by the north that he must leave Spain, which he
+still desired to leave since there were no wars in that country.
+
+Morano knew not clearly what philosophy was, yet he wasted no
+thoughts upon the night that was gone; and, fitting up his frying-
+pan immediately, he brought out what was left of his bacon and
+began to look for material to make a fire. The bacon lay waiting
+in the frying-pan for some while before this material was
+gathered, for nothing grew on the mountain but a heath; and of
+that there were few bushes, scattered here and there.
+
+Rodriguez, far from ruminating upon the events of the previous
+night, realised as he watched these preparations that he was
+enormously hungry. And when Morano had kindled a fire and the
+smell of cooking arose, he who had held the chair of magic at
+Saragossa was banished from both their minds, although upon this
+very spot they had spent so strange a night; but where bacon is,
+and there be hungry men, the things of yesterday are often
+forgotten.
+
+"Morano," said Rodriguez, "we must walk far to-day."
+
+"Indeed, master," said Morano, "we must push on to these wars; for
+you have no castle, master, no lands, no fortune ..."
+
+"Come," said Rodriguez.
+
+Morano slung his frying-pan behind him: they had eaten up the last
+of his bacon: he stood up, and they were ready for the journey.
+The smoke from their meagre fire went thinly into the air, the
+small grey clouds of it went slowly up: nothing beside remained to
+bid them farewell, or for them to thank for their strange night's
+hospitality. They climbed till they reached the rugged crest of
+the mountain; thence they saw a wide plain and the morning: the
+day was waiting for them.
+
+The northern slope of the mountain was wholly different from that
+black congregation of angry rocks through which they had climbed
+by night to the House of Wonder.
+
+The slope that now lay before them was smooth and grassy, flowing
+before them far, a gentle slope that was soon to lend speed to
+Rodriguez' feet, adding nimbleness even to youth. Soon, too, it
+was to lift onward the dull weight of Morano as he followed his
+master towards unknown wars, youth going before him like a spirit
+and the good slope helping behind. But before they gave themselves
+to that waiting journey they stood a moment and looked at the
+shining plain that lay before them like an open page, on which was
+the whole chronicle of that day's wayfaring. There was the road
+they should travel by, there were the streams it crossed and
+narrow woods they might rest in, and dim on the farthest edge was
+the place they must spend that night. It was all, as it were
+written, upon the plain they watched, but in a writing not
+intended for them, and, clear although it be, never to be
+interpreted by one of our race. Thus they saw clear, from a
+height, the road they would go by, but not one of all the events
+to which it would lead them.
+
+"Master," said Morano, "shall we have more adventures to-day?"
+
+"I trust so," said Rodriguez. "We have far to go, and it will be
+dull journeying without them."
+
+Morano turned his eyes from his master's face and looked back to
+the plain. "There, master," he said, "where our road runs through
+a wood, will our adventure be there, think you? Or there,
+perhaps," and he waved his hand widely farther.
+
+"No," said Rodriguez, "we pass that in bright daylight."
+
+"Is that not good for adventure?" said Morano.
+
+"The romances teach," said Rodriguez, "that twilight or night are
+better. The shade of deep woods is favourable, but there are no
+such woods on this plain. When we come to evening we shall
+doubtless meet some adventure, far over there." And he pointed to
+the grey rim of the plain where it started climbing towards hills.
+
+"These are good days," said Morano. He forgot how short a time ago
+he had said regretfully that these days were not as the old days.
+But our race, speaking generally, is rarely satisfied with the
+present, and Morano's cheerfulness had not come from his having
+risen suddenly superior to this everyday trouble of ours; it came
+from his having shifted his gaze to the future. Two things are
+highly tolerable to us, and even alluring, the past and the
+future. It was only with the present that Morano was ever
+dissatisfied.
+
+When Morano said that the days were good Rodriguez set out to find
+them, or at least that one that for some while now lay waiting for
+them on the plain. He strode down the slope at once and, endowing
+nature with his own impatience, he felt that he heard the morning
+call to him wistfully. Morano followed.
+
+For an hour these refugees escaping from peace went down the
+slope; and in that hour they did five swift miles, miles that
+seemed to run by them as they walked, and so they came lightly to
+the level plain. And in the next hour they did four miles more.
+Words were few, either because Morano brooded mainly upon one
+thought, the theme of which was his lack of bacon, or because he
+kept his breath to follow his master who, with youth and the
+morning, was coming out of the hills at a pace not tuned to
+Morano's forty years or so. And at the end of these nine miles
+Morano perceived a house, a little way from the road, on the left,
+upon rising ground. A mile or so ahead they saw the narrow wood
+that they had viewed in the morning from the mountain running
+across the plain. They saw now by the lie of the ground that it
+probably followed a stream, a pleasant place in which to take the
+rest demanded by Spain at noon. It was just an hour to noon; so
+Rodriguez, keeping the road, told Morano to join him where it
+entered the wood when he had acquired his bacon. And then as they
+parted a thought occurred to Rodriguez, which was that bacon cost
+money. It was purely an afterthought, an accidental fancy, such as
+inspirations are, for he had never had to buy bacon. So he gave
+Morano a fifth part of his money, a large gold coin the size of
+one of our five-shilling pieces, engraved of course upon one side
+with the glories and honours of that golden period of Spain, and
+upon the other with the head of the lord the King. It was only by
+chance he had brought any at all; he was not what our newspapers
+will call, if they ever care to notice him, a level-headed
+business man. At the sight of the gold piece Morano bowed, for he
+felt this gift of gold to be an occasion; but he trusted more for
+the purchase of the bacon to some few small silver coins of his
+own that he kept among lumps of lard and pieces of string.
+
+And so they parted for a while, Rodriguez looking for some great
+shadowy oak with moss under it near a stream, Morano in quest of
+bacon.
+
+When Rodriguez entered the wood he found his oak, but it was not
+such an oak as he cared to rest beneath during the heat of the
+day, nor would you have done so, my reader, even though you have
+been to the wars and seen many a pretty mess; for four of la Garda
+were by it and were arranging to hang a man from the best of the
+branches.
+
+"La Garda again," said Rodriguez nearly aloud.
+
+His eye drooped, his look was listless, he gazed at other things;
+while a glance that you had not noticed, flashed slantingly at la
+Garda, satisfied Rodriguez that all four were strangers: then he
+walked straight towards them merrily. The man they proposed to
+hang was a stranger too. He appeared at first to be as stout as
+Morano, and he was nearly half a foot taller, but his stoutness
+turned out to be sheer muscle. The broad man was clothed in old
+brown leather and had blue eyes.
+
+Now there was something about the poise of Rodriguez' young head
+which gave him an air not unlike that which the King himself
+sometimes wore when he went courting. It suited his noble sword
+and his merry plume. When la Garda saw him they were all
+politeness at once, and invited him to see the hanging, for which
+Rodriguez thanked them with amplest courtesy.
+
+"It is not a bull-fight," said the chief of la Garda almost
+apologetically. But Rodriguez waved aside his deprecations and
+declared himself charmed at the prospect of a hanging.
+
+Bear with me, reader, while I champion a bad cause and seek to
+palliate what is inexcusable. As we travel about the world on our
+way through life we meet and pass here and there, in peace or in
+war, other men, fellow-travellers: and sometimes there is no more
+than time for a glance, eye to eye. And in that glance you see the
+sort of man: and chiefly there are two sorts. The one sort always
+brooding, always planning; mean, silent men, collecting properties
+and money; keeping the law on their side, keeping everything on
+their side; except women and heaven, and the late, leisurely
+judgment of simple people: and the others merry folk, whose eyes
+twinkle, whose money flies, who will sooner laugh than plan, who
+seem to inherit rightfully the happiness that the others plot for,
+and fail to come by with all their schemes. In the man who was to
+provide the entertainment Rodriguez recognised the second kind.
+
+Now even though the law had caught a saint that had strayed too
+far outside the boundary of Heaven, and desired to hang him,
+Rodriguez knew that it was his duty to help the law while help was
+needed, and to applaud after the thing was done. The law to
+Rodriguez was the most sacred thing man had made, if indeed it
+were not divine; but since the privilege that two days ago had
+afforded him of studying it more closely, it appeared to him the
+blindest, silliest thing with which he had had to do since the
+kittens were drowned that his cat Tabitharina had had at Arguento
+Harez.
+
+It was in this deplorable state of mind that Rodriguez' glance
+fell on the merry eyes and the solemn predicament of the man in
+the leather coat, standing pinioned under a long branch of the
+oak-tree: and he determined from that moment to disappoint la
+Garda and, I fear also, my reader, perhaps to disappoint you, of
+the hanging that they at least had promised themselves.
+
+"Think you," said Rodriguez, "that for so stout a knave this
+branch of yours suffices?"
+
+Now it was an excellent branch. But it was not so much Rodriguez'
+words as the anxious way in which he looked at the branch that
+aroused the anxieties of la Garda: and soon they were looking
+about to find a better tree; and when four men start doing this in
+a wood time quickly passes. Meanwhile Morano drew near, and
+Rodriguez went to meet him.
+
+"Master," said Morano, all out of breath, "they had no bacon. But
+I got these two bottles of wine. It is strong wine, which is a
+rare deluder of the senses, which will need to be deluded if we
+are to go hungry."
+
+Rodriguez was about to cut short Morano's chatter when he thought
+of a use for the wine, and was silent a moment. And as he pondered
+Morano looked up and saw la Garda and at the same time perceived
+the situation, for he had as quick an eye for a bad business as
+any man.
+
+"No one with the horses," was his comment; for they were tethered
+a little apart. But Rodriguez' mind had already explored a surer
+method than the one that Morano seemed to be contemplating. This
+method he told Morano. And now, from little tugs that they were
+giving to the doubled rope that hung over the branch of the oak-
+tree, it was clear enough that the men of the law were returning
+to their confidence in that very sufficient branch.
+
+They looked up with questions ripe to drop from their lips when
+they saw Rodriguez returning with Morano. But before one of them
+spoke Morano flung to them from far off a little piece of his
+wisdom: for cast a truth into an occasion and it will always
+trouble the waters, usually stirring up contradiction, but always
+bringing something to the surface.
+
+"Senores," he said, "no man can enjoy a hanging with a dry
+throat."
+
+Thus he turned their attention a while from the business in hand,
+changing their thoughts from the stout neck of the prisoner to
+their own throats, wondering were they dry; and you do not wonder
+long about this in the south without finding that what you feared
+is true. And then he let them see the two great bottles, all full
+of wine, for the invention of the false bottom that gives to our
+champagne-bottles the place they rightly hold among famous
+deceptions had not as yet been discovered.
+
+"It is true," said la Garda. And Rodriguez made Morano put one of
+the bottles away in a piece of a sack that he carried: and when la
+Garda saw one of the two bottles disappear it somehow decided them
+to have the other, though how this came to be so there is no
+saying; and thus the hanging was postponed again.
+
+Now the drink was a yellow wine, sweet and heavy and stronger than
+our port; only our whisky could out-triumph it, but there in the
+warm south it answered its purpose. Rodriguez beckoned Morano up
+and offered the bottle to one of la Garda; but scarcely had he put
+it to his lips when Rodriguez bade him stop, saying that he had
+had his share. And he did the same with the next man.
+
+Now there be few things indeed which la Garda resent more than
+meagre hospitality in the matter of drink, and with all their wits
+striving to cope with this vicious defect in Rodriguez, as they
+rightly or wrongly regarded it, how should they have any to spare
+for obvious precautions? As the third man drank, Rodriguez turned
+to speak to Morano; and the representative of the law took such
+advantage of an opportunity that he feared to be fleeting, that
+when Rodriguez turned round again the bottle was just half empty.
+Rodriguez had timed it very nicely.
+
+Next Rodriguez put the bottle to his lips and held it there a
+little time, while the fourth man of the law, who was guarding the
+prisoner, watched Rodriguez wistfully, and afterwards Morano, who
+took the bottle next. Yet neither Rodriguez nor Morano drank.
+
+"You can finish the bottle," said Rodriguez to this anxious
+watcher, who came forward eagerly though full of doubts, which
+changed to warm feelings of exuberant gratitude when he found how
+much remained. Thus he obtained not much less than two tumblerfuls
+of wine that, as I have said, was stronger than port; and noon was
+nearing and it was spring in Spain. And then he returned to guard
+his prisoner under the oak-tree and lay down there on the moss,
+remembering that it was his duty to keep awake. And afterwards
+with one hand he took hold of a rope that bound the prisoner's
+ankles, so that he might still guard his prisoner even though he
+should fall asleep.
+
+Now two of the men had had little more than the full of a sherry
+glass each. To these Morano made signs that there was another
+bottle, and, coming round behind his master, he covertly uncorked
+it and gave them their heart's desire; and a little was left over
+for the man who drank third on the first occasion. And presently
+the spirits of all four of la Garda grew haughty and forgot their
+humble bodies, and would fain have gone forth to dwell with the
+sons of light, while their bodies lay on the moss and the sun grew
+warmer and warmer, shining dappled in amongst the small green
+leaves. All seemed still but for the winged insects flashing
+through shafts of the sunlight out of the gloom of the trees and
+disappearing again like infinitesimal meteors. But our concern is
+with the thoughts of man, of which deeds are but the shadows:
+wherever these are active it is wrong to say all is still; for
+whether they cast their shadows, which are actions, or whether
+they remain a force not visibly stirring matter, they are the
+source of the tales we write and the lives we lead; it is they
+that gave History her material and they that bade her work it up
+into books.
+
+And thoughts were very active about that oak-tree. For while the
+thoughts of la Garda arose like dawn, and disappeared into mists,
+their prisoner was silently living through the sunny days of his
+life, which are at no time quite lost to us, and which flash vivid
+and bright and near when memory touches them, herself awakened by
+the nearness of death. He lived again days far from the day that
+had brought him where he stood. He drew from those days (that is
+to say) that delight, that essence of hours, that something which
+we call life. The sun, the wind, the rough sand, the splash of the
+sea, on the star-fish, and all the things that it feels during its
+span, are stored in something like its memory, and are what we
+call its life: it is the same with all of us. Life is feeling. The
+prisoner from the store of his memory was taking all he had. His
+head was lifted, he was gazing northwards, far further than his
+eyes could see, to shining spaces in great woods; and there his
+threatened being walked in youth, with steps such as spirits take,
+over immortal flowers, which were dim and faint but unfading
+because they lived on in memory. In memory he walked with some who
+were now far from his footsteps. And, seen through the gloaming of
+that perilous day, how bright did those far days appear! Did they
+not seem sunnier than they really were? No, reader; for all the
+radiance that glittered so late in his mind was drawn from those
+very days; it was their own brightness that was shining now: we
+are not done with the days that were as soon as their sunsets have
+faded, but a light remains from them and grows fairer and fairer,
+like an afterglow lingering among tremendous peaks above
+immeasurable slopes of snow.
+
+The prisoner had scarcely noticed Rodriguez or his servant, any
+more than he noticed his captors; for there come an intensity to
+those who walk near death that makes them a little alien from
+other men, life flaring up in them at the last into so grand a
+flame that the lives of the others seem a little cold and dim
+where they dwell remote from that sunset that we call mortality.
+So he looked silently at the days that were as they came dancing
+back again to him from where they had long lain lost in chasms of
+time, to which they had slipped over dark edges of years. Smiling
+they came, but all wistfully anxious, as though their errand were
+paramount and their span short: he saw them cluster about him,
+running now, bringing their tiny gifts, and scarcely heard the
+heavy sigh of his guard as Rodriguez gagged him and Morano tied
+him up.
+
+Had Rodriguez now released the prisoner they could have been three
+to three, in the event of things going wrong with the sleep of la
+Garda; but, since in the same time they could gag and bind
+another, the odds would be the same at two to two, and Rodriguez
+preferred this to the slight uncertainties that would be connected
+with the entry of another partner. They accordingly gagged the
+next man and bound his wrists and ankles. And that Spanish wine
+held good with the other two and bound them far down among the
+deeps of dreams: and so it should, for it was of a vine that grew
+in the vales of Spain and had ripened in one of the years of the
+golden age.
+
+They bound one as easily as they had bound the other two; and the
+last Rodriguez watched while Morano cut the ropes off the
+prisoner, for he had run out of bits of twine and all other
+improvisations. With these ropes he ran back to his master, and
+they tied up the last prisoner but did not gag him.
+
+"Shall we gag him, master, like the rest?" said Morano.
+
+"No," said Rodriguez. "He has nothing to say."
+
+And though this remark turned out to be strictly untrue, it well
+enough answered its purpose.
+
+And then they saw standing before them the man they had freed. And
+he bowed to Rodriguez like one that had never bowed before. I do
+not mean that he bowed with awkwardness, like imitative men unused
+to politeness, but he bowed as the oak bows to the woodman; he
+stood straight, looking Rodriguez in the eyes, then he bowed as
+though he had let his spirit break, which allowed him to bow to
+never a man before. Thus, if my pen has been able dimly to tell of
+it, thus bowed the man in the old leathern jacket. And Rodriguez
+bowed to him in answer with the elegance that they that had dwelt
+at Arguento Harez had slowly drawn from the ages.
+
+"Senor, your name," said the stranger.
+
+"Lord of Arguento Harez," said Rodriguez.
+
+"Senor," he said, "being a busy man, I have seldom time to pray.
+And the blessed Saints, being more busy than I, I think seldom
+hear my prayers: yet your name shall go up to them. I will often
+tell it them quietly in the forest, and not on their holy days
+when bells are ringing and loud prayers fill Heaven. It may be ..."
+
+"Senor," Rodriguez said, "I profoundly thank you."
+
+Even in these days, when bullets are often thicker than prayers,
+we are not quite thankless for the prayers of others: in those
+days they were what "closing quotations" are on the Stock
+Exchange, ink in Fleet Street, machinery in the Midlands; common
+but valued; and Rodriguez' thanks were sincere.
+
+And now that the curses of the ungagged one of la Garda were
+growing monotonous, Rodriguez turned to Morano.
+
+"Ungag the rest," he said, "and let them talk to each other."
+
+"Master," Morano muttered, feeling that there was enough noise
+already for a small wood, but he went and did as he was ordered.
+And Rodriguez was justified of his humane decision, for the pent
+thoughts of all three found expression together and, all four now
+talking at once, mitigated any bitterness there may have been in
+those solitary curses. And now Rodriguez could talk undisturbed.
+
+"Whither?" said the stranger.
+
+"To the wars," said Rodriguez, "if wars there be."
+
+"Aye," said the stranger, "there be always wars somewhere. By
+which road go you?"
+
+"North," said Rodriguez, and he pointed. The stranger turned his
+eyes to the way Rodriguez pointed.
+
+"That brings you to the forest," he said, "unless you go far
+around, as many do."
+
+"What forest?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"The great forest named Shadow Valley," said the stranger.
+
+"How far?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"Forty miles," said the stranger.
+
+Rodriguez looked at la Garda and then at their horses, and
+thought. He must be far from la Garda by nightfall.
+
+"It is not easy to pass through Shadow Valley," said the stranger.
+
+"Is it not?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"Have you a gold great piece?" the stranger said.
+
+Rodriguez held out one of his remaining four: the stranger took
+it. And then he began to rub it on a stone, and continued to rub
+while Rodriguez watched in silence, until the image of the lord
+the King was gone and the face of the coin was scratchy and shiny
+and flat. And then he produced from a pocket or pouch in his
+jacket a graving tool with a round wooden handle, which he took in
+the palm of his hand, and the edge of the steel came out between
+his forefinger and thumb: and with this he cut at the coin. And
+Morano rejoined them from his merciful mission and stood and
+wondered at the cutting. And while he cut they talked.
+
+They did not ask him how he came to be chosen for hanging, because
+in every country there are about a hundred individualists, varying
+to perhaps half a hundred in poor ages. They go their hundred
+ways, or their half-dozen ways; and there is a hundred and first
+way, or a seventh way, which is the way that is cut for the rest:
+and if some of the rest catch one of the hundred, or one of the
+six, they naturally hang him, if they have a rope, and if hanging
+is the custom of the country, for different countries use
+different methods. And you saw by this man's eyes that he was one
+of the hundred. Rodriguez therefore only sought to know how he
+came to be caught.
+
+"La Garda found you, senor?" he said.
+
+"As you see," said the stranger. "I came too far from my home."
+
+"You were travelling?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"Shopping," he said.
+
+At this word Morano's interest awakened wide. "Senor," he said,
+"what is the right price for a bottle of this wine that la Garda
+drink?"
+
+"I know not," said the man in the brown jacket; "they give me
+these things."
+
+"Where is your home, senor?" Rodriguez asked.
+
+"It is Shadow Valley," he said.
+
+One never saw Rodriguez fail to understand anything: if he could
+not clear a situation up he did not struggle with it. Morano
+rubbed his chin: he had heard of Shadow Valley only dimly, for all
+the travellers he had known out of the north had gone round it.
+Rodriguez and Morano bent their heads and watched a design that
+was growing out of the gold. And as the design grew under the hand
+of the strange worker he began to talk of the horses. He spoke as
+though his plans had been clearly established by edict, and as
+though no others could be.
+
+"When I have gone with two horses," he said, "ride hard with the
+other two till you reach the village named Lowlight, and take them
+to the forge of Fernandez the smith, where one will shoe them who
+is not Fernandez."
+
+And he waved his hand northwards. There was only one road. Then
+all his attention fell back again to his work on the gold coin;
+and when those blue eyes were turned away there seemed nothing
+left to question. And now Rodriguez saw the design was a crown, a
+plain gold circlet with oak leaves rising up from it. And this
+woodland emblem stood up out of the gold, for the worker had
+hollowed the coin away all around it, and was sloping it up to the
+edge. Little was said by the watchers in the wonder of seeing the
+work, for no craft is very far from the line beyond which is
+magic, and the man in the leather coat was clearly a craftsman:
+and he said nothing for he worked at a craft. And when the
+arboreal crown was finished, and its edges were straight and
+sharp, an hour had passed since he began near noon. Then he
+drilled a hole near the rim and, drawing a thin green ribbon from
+his pocket, he passed it through the hole and, rising, he suddenly
+hung it round Rodriguez' neck.
+
+"Wear it thus," he said, "while you go through Shadow Valley."
+
+As he said this he stepped back among the trees, and Rodriguez
+followed to thank him. Not finding him behind the tree where he
+thought to find him, he walked round several others, and Morano
+joined his search; but the stranger had vanished. When they
+returned again to the little clearing they heard sounds of
+movement in the wood, and a little way off where the four horses
+had grazed there were now only two, which were standing there with
+their heads up.
+
+"We must ride, Morano," said Rodriguez.
+
+"Ride, master?" said Morano dolefully.
+
+"If we walk away," said Rodriguez, "they will walk after us."
+
+"They" meant la Garda. It was unnecessary for him to tell Morano
+what I thus tell the reader, for in the wood it was hard to hear
+anyone else, while to think of anyone else was out of the
+question.
+
+"What shall I do to them, master?" said Morano.
+
+They were now standing close to their captives and this simple
+question calmed the four men's curses, all of a sudden, like
+shutting the door on a storm.
+
+"Leave them," Rodriguez said. And la Garda's spirits rose and they
+cursed again.
+
+"Ah. To die in the wood," said Morano. "No," said Rodriguez; and
+he walked towards the horses. And something in that "No" sounding
+almost contemptuous, Morano's feelings were hurt, and he blurted
+out to his master "But how can they get away to get their food??
+It is good knots that I tie, master."
+
+"Morano," Rodriguez said, "I remember ten ways in the books of
+romance whereby bound men untie themselves; and doubtless one or
+two more I have read and forgot; and there may be other ways in
+the books that I have not read, besides any way that there be of
+which no books tell. And in addition to these ways, one of them
+may draw a comrade's sword with his teeth and thus ..."
+
+"Shall I pull out their teeth?" said Morano.
+
+"Ride," said Rodriguez, for they were now come to the horses. And
+sorrowfully Morano looked at the horse that was to be his, as a
+man might look at a small, uncomfortable boat that is to carry him
+far upon a stormy day. And then Rodriguez helped him into the
+saddle.
+
+"Can you stay there?" Rodriguez said. "We have far to go."
+
+"Master," Morano answered, "these hands can hold till evening."
+
+And then Rodriguez mounted, leaving Morano gripping the high front
+of the saddle with his large brown hands. But as soon as the
+horses started he got a grip with his heels as well, and later on
+with his knees. Rodriguez led the way on to the straggling road
+and was soon galloping northwards, while Morano's heels kept his
+horse up close to his master's. Morano rode as though trained in
+the same school that some while later taught Macaulay's
+equestrian, who rode with "loose rein and bloody spur." Yet the
+miles went swiftly by as they galloped on soft white dust, which
+lifted and settled, some of it, back on the lazy road, while some
+of it was breathed by Morano. The gold coin on the green silk
+ribbon flapped up and down as Rodriguez rode, till he stuffed it
+inside his clothing and remembered no more about it. Once they saw
+before them the man they had snatched from the noose: he was going
+hard and leading a loose horse. And then where the road bent round
+a low hill he galloped out of sight and they saw him no more. He
+had the loose horse to change on to as soon as the other was
+tired: they had no prospect of overtaking him. And so he passed
+out of their minds as their host had done who went away with his
+household to Saragossa.
+
+At first Rodriguez' mandolin, that was always slung on his back,
+bumped up and down uncomfortably; but he eased it by altering the
+strap: small things like this bring contentment. And then he
+settled down to ride. But no contentment came near Morano nor did
+he look for it. On the first day of his wanderings he had worn his
+master's clothes, which has been an experience standing somewhat
+where toothache does, which is somewhere about half-way between
+discomfort and agony. On the second day he had climbed at the end
+of a weary journey over those sharp rocks whose shape was adapted
+so ill to his body. On the third day he was riding. He did not
+look for comfort. But he met discomfort with an easy resignation
+that almost defeated the intention of Satan who sends it, unless--
+as is very likely--it be from Heaven. And in spite of all
+discomforts he gaily followed Rodriguez. In a thousand days at the
+Inn of the Dragon and Knight no two were so different to Morano
+that one stood out from the other, or any from the rest. It was
+all as though one day were repeated again and again; and at some
+point in this monotonous repetition, like a milestone shaped as
+the rest on a perfectly featureless road, life would end and the
+meaningless repetition stop: and looking back on it there would
+only be one day to see, or, if he could not look back, it would be
+all gone for nothing. And then, into that one day that he was
+living on in the gloaming of that grim inn, Rodriguez had
+appeared, and Morano had known him for one of those wandering
+lights that sometimes make sudden day among the stars. He knew--
+no, he felt--that by following him, yesterday today and tomorrow
+would be three separate possessions in memory. Morano gladly gave
+up that one dull day he was living for the new strange days
+through which Rodriguez was sure to lead him. Gladly he left it:
+if this be not true how then has a man with a dream led thousands
+to follow his fancy, from the Crusades to whatever gay madness be
+the fashion when this is read? As they galloped the scent of the
+flowers rushed into Rodriguez' nostrils, while Morano mainly
+breathed the dust from the hooves of his master's horse. But the
+quest was favoured the more by the scent of the flowers inspiring
+its leader's fancies. So Morano gained even from this.
+
+In the first hour they shortened by fifteen miles the length of
+their rambling quest. In the next hour they did five miles; and in
+the third hour ten. After this they rode slowly. The sun was
+setting. Morano regarded the sunset with delight, for it seemed to
+promise jovially the end of his sufferings, which except for brief
+periods when they went on foot, to rest--as Rodriguez said--the
+horses, had been continuous and even increasing since they
+started. Rodriguez, perhaps a little weary too, drew from the
+sunset a more sombre feeling, as sensitive minds do: he responded
+to its farewell, he felt its beauty, and as little winds turned
+cool and the shine of blades of grass faded, making all the plain
+dimmer, he heard, or believed he heard, further off than he could
+see, sounds on the plain beyond ridges, in hollows, behind clumps
+of bushes; as though small creatures all unknown to his learning
+played instruments cut from reeds upon unmapped streams. In this
+hour, among these fancies, Rodriguez saw clear on a hill the white
+walls of the village of Lowlight. And now they began to notice
+that a great round moon was shining. The sunset grew dimmer and
+the moonlight stole in softly, as a cat might walk through great
+doors on her silent feet into a throne-room just as the king had
+gone: and they entered the village slowly in the perfect moment of
+twilight.
+
+The round horizon was brimming with a pale but magical colour,
+welling up to the tips of trees and the battlements of white
+towers. Earth seemed a mysterious cup overfull of this pigment of
+wonder. Clouds wandering low, straying far from their azure
+fields, were dipped in it. The towers of Lowlight turned slowly
+rose in that light, and glowed together with the infinite
+gloaming, so that for this brief hour the things of man were wed
+with the things of eternity. It was into this wide, pale flame of
+aetherial rose that the moon came stealing like a magician on tip-
+toe, to enchant the tips of the trees, low clouds and the towers
+of Lowlight. A blue light from beyond our world touched the pink
+that is Earth's at evening: and what was strange and a matter for
+hushed voices, marvellous but yet of our earth, became at that
+touch unearthly. All in a moment it was, and Rodriguez gasped to
+see it. Even Morano's eyes grew round with the coming of wonder,
+or with some dim feeling that an unnoticed moment had made all
+things strange and new.
+
+For some moments the spell of moonlight on sunlight hovered: the
+air was brimming and quivering with it: magic touched earth. For
+some moments, some thirty beats of a heron's wing, had the angels
+sung to men, had their songs gone earthward into that rosy glow,
+gliding past layers of faintly tinted cloud, like moths at dusk
+towards a briar-rose; in those few moments men would have known
+their language. Rodriguez reined in his horse in the heavy silence
+and waited. For what he waited he knew not: some unearthly answer
+perhaps to his questioning thoughts that had wandered far from
+earth, though no words came to him with which to ask their
+question and he did not know what question they would ask. He was
+all vibrating with the human longing: I know not what it is, but
+perhaps philosophers know. He sat there waiting while a late bird
+sailed homeward, sat while Morano wondered. And nothing spake from
+anywhere.
+
+And now a dog began to notice the moon: now a child cried suddenly
+that had been dragged back from the street, where it had wandered
+at bedtime: an old dog rose from where it had lain in the sun and
+feebly yet confidently scratched at a door: a cat peered round a
+corner: a man spoke: Rodriguez knew there would be no answer now.
+
+Rodriguez hit his horse, the tired animal went forward, and he and
+Morano rode slowly up the street.
+
+Dona Serafina of the Valley of Dawnlight had left the heat of the
+room that looked on the fields, and into which the sun had all day
+been streaming, and had gone at sunset to sit in the balcony that
+looked along the street. Often she would do this at sunset; but
+she rather dreamed as she sat there than watched the street, for
+all that it had to show she knew without glancing. Evening after
+evening as soon as winter was over the neighbour would come from
+next door and stretch himself and yawn and sit on a chair by his
+doorway, and the neighbour from opposite would saunter across the
+way to him, and they would talk with eagerness of the sale of
+cattle, and sometimes, but more coldly, of the affairs of kings.
+She knew, but cared not to know, just when the two old men would
+begin their talk. She knew who owned every dog that stretched
+itself in the dust until chilly winds blew in the dusk and they
+rose up dissatisfied. She knew the affairs of that street like an
+old, old lesson taught drearily, and her thoughts went far away to
+vales of an imagination where they met with many another maiden
+fancy, and they all danced there together through the long
+twilight in Spring. And then her mother would come and warn her
+that the evening grew cold, and Serafina would turn from the
+mystery of evening into the house and the candle-light. This was
+so evening after evening all through spring and summer for two
+long years of her youth. And then, this evening, just as the two
+old neighbours began to discuss whether or not the subjugation of
+the entire world by Spain would be for its benefit, just as one of
+the dogs in the road was rising slowly to shake itself, neighbours
+and dogs all raised their heads to look, and there was Rodriguez
+riding down the street and Morano coming behind him. When Serafina
+saw this she brought her eyes back from dreams, for she dreamed
+not so deeply but that the cloak and plume of Rodriguez found some
+place upon the boundaries of her day-dream. When she saw the way
+he sat his horse and how he carried his head she let her eyes
+flash for a little moment along the street from her balcony. And
+if some critical reader ask how she did it I answer, "My good sir,
+I can't tell you, because I don't know," or "My dear lady, what a
+question to ask!" And where she learned to do it I cannot think,
+but nothing was easier. And then she smiled to think that she had
+done the very thing that her mother had warned her there was
+danger in doing.
+
+"Serafina," her mother said in that moment at the large window,
+"the evening grows cold. It might be dangerous to stay there
+longer." And Serafina entered the house, as she had done at the
+coming of dusk on many an evening.
+
+Rodriguez missed as much of that flash of her eyes, shot from
+below the darkness of her hair, as youth in its first glory and
+freedom misses. For at the point on the road called life at which
+Rodriguez was then, one is high on a crag above the promontories
+of watchmen, lower only than the peaks of the prophets, from which
+to see such things. Yet it did not need youth to notice Serafina.
+Beggars had blessed her for the poise of her head.
+
+She turned that head a little as she went between the windows,
+till Rodriguez gazing up to her saw the fair shape of her neck:
+and almost in that moment the last of the daylight died. The
+windows shut; and Rodriguez rode on with Morano to find the forge
+that was kept by Fernandez the smith. And presently they came to
+the village forge, a cottage with huge, high roof whose beams were
+safe from sparks; and its fire was glowing redly into the
+moonlight through the wide door made for horses, although there
+seemed no work to be done, and a man with a swart moustache was
+piling more logs on. Over the door was burned on oak in ungainly
+great letters--
+
+"FERNANDEZ"
+
+"For whom do you seek, senor?" he said to Rodriguez, who had
+halted before him with his horse's nose inside the doorway
+sniffing.
+
+"I look," he said, "for him who is not Fernandez."
+
+"I am he," said the man by the fire.
+
+Rodriguez questioned no further but dismounted, and bade Morano
+lead the horses in. And then he saw in the dark at the back of the
+forge the other two horses that he had seen in the wood. And they
+were shod as he had never seen horses shod before. For the front
+pair of shoes were joined by a chain riveted stoutly to each, and
+the hind pair also; and both horses were shod alike. The method
+was equally new to Morano. And now the man with the swart
+moustache picked up another bunch of horseshoes hanging in pairs
+on chains. And Rodriguez was not far out when he guessed that
+whenever la Garda overtook their horses they would find that
+Fernandez was far away making holiday, while he who shod them now
+would be gone upon other business. And all this work seemed to
+Rodriguez not to be his affair.
+
+"Farewell," he said to the smith that was not Fernandez; and with
+a pat for his horse he left it, having obtained a promise of oats.
+And so Rodriguez and Morano went on foot again, Morano elated in
+spite of fatigue and pain, rejoicing to feel the earth once more,
+flat under the soles of his feet; Rodriguez a little humbled. THE
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SIXTH CHRONICLE
+
+HOW HE SANG TO HIS MANDOLIN AND WHAT CAME OF HIS SINGING
+
+
+They walked back slowly in silence up the street down which they
+had ridden. Earth darkened, the moon grew brighter: and Rodriguez
+gazing at the pale golden disk began to wonder who dwelt in the
+lunar valleys; and what message, if folk were there, they had for
+our peoples; and in what language such message could ever be, and
+how it could fare across that limpid remoteness that wafted light
+on to the coasts of Earth and lapped in silence on the lunar
+shores. And as he wondered he thought of his mandolin.
+
+"Morano," he said, "buy bacon."
+
+Morano's eyes brightened: they were forty-five miles from the
+hills on which he had last tasted bacon. He selected his house
+with a glance, and then he was gone. And Rodriguez reflected too
+late that he had forgotten to tell Morano where he should find
+him, and this with night coming on in a strange village. Scarcely,
+Rodriguez reflected, he knew where he was going himself. Yet if
+old tunes lurking in its hollows, echoing though imperceptibly
+from long-faded evenings, gave the mandolin any knowledge of human
+affairs that other inanimate things cannot possess, the mandolin
+knew.
+
+Let us in fancy call up the shade of Morano from that far
+generation. Let us ask him where Rodriguez is going. Those blue
+eyes, dim with the distance over which our fancy has called them,
+look in our eyes with wonder.
+
+"I do not know," he says, "where Don Rodriguez is going. My master
+did not tell me."
+
+Did he notice nothing as they rode by that balcony?
+
+"Nothing," Morano answers, "except my master riding."
+
+We may let Morano's shade drift hence again, for we shall discover
+nothing: nor is this an age to which to call back spirits.
+
+Rodriguez strolled slowly on the deep dust of that street as
+though wondering all the while where he should go; and soon he and
+his mandolin were below that very balcony whereon he had seen the
+white neck of Serafina gleam with the last of the daylight. And
+now the spells of the moon charmed Earth with their full power.
+
+The balcony was empty. How should it have been otherwise? And yet
+Rodriguez grieved. For between the vision that had drawn his
+footsteps and that bare balcony below shuttered windows was the
+difference between a haven, sought over leagues of sea, and sheer,
+uncharted cliff. It brought a wistfulness into the music he
+played, and a melancholy that was all new to Rodriguez, yet often
+and often before had that mandolin sent up through evening against
+unheeding Space that cry that man cannot utter; for the spirit of
+man needs a mandolin as a comrade to face the verdict of the
+chilly stars as he needs a bulldog for more mundane things.
+
+Soon out of the depth of that stout old mandolin, in which so many
+human sorrows had spun tunes out of themselves, as the spiders
+spin misty grey webs, till it was all haunted with music, soon the
+old cry went up to the stars again, a thread of supplication spun
+of the matter which else were distilled in tears, beseeching it
+knew not what. And, but that Fate is deaf, all that man asks in
+music had been granted then.
+
+What sorrows had Rodriguez known in his life that he made so sad a
+melody? I know not. It was the mandolin. When the mandolin was
+made it knew at once all the sorrows of man, and all the old
+unnamed longings that none defines. It knew them as the dog knows
+the alliance that its forefathers made with man. A mandolin weeps
+the tears that its master cannot shed, or utters the prayers that
+are deeper than its master's lips can draw, as a dog will fight
+for his master with teeth that are longer than man's. And if the
+moonlight streamed on untroubled, and though Fate was deaf, yet
+beauty of those fresh strains going starward from under his
+fingers touched at least the heart of Rodriguez and gilded his
+dreams and gave to his thoughts a mournful autumnal glory, until
+he sang all newly as he never had sung before, with limpid voice
+along the edge of tears, a love-song old as the woods of his
+father's valleys at whose edge he had heard it once drift through
+the evening. And as he played and sang with his young soul in the
+music he fancied (and why not, if they care aught for our souls in
+Heaven?) he fancied the angles putting their hands each one on a
+star and leaning out of Heaven through the constellations to
+listen.
+
+"A vile song, senor, and a vile tune with it," said a voice quite
+close.
+
+However much the words hurt his pride in his mandolin Rodriguez
+recognised in the voice the hidalgo's accent and knew that it was
+an equal that now approached him in the moonlight round a corner
+of the house with the balcony; and he knew that the request he
+courteously made would be as courteously granted.
+
+"Senor," he said, "I pray you to permit me to lean my mandolin
+against the wall securely before we speak of my song."
+
+"Most surely, senor," the stranger replied, "for there is no fault
+with the mandolin."
+
+"Senor," Rodriguez said, "I thank you profoundly." And he bowed to
+the gallant, whom he now perceived to be young, a youth tall and
+lithe like himself, one whom we might have chosen for these
+chronicles had we not found Rodriguez.
+
+Then Rodriguez stepped back a short way and placed his kerchief on
+the ground; and upon this he put his mandolin and leaned it
+against the wall. When the mandolin was safe from dust or accident
+he approached the stranger and drew his sword.
+
+"Senor," he said, "we will now discuss music."
+
+"Right gladly, senor," said the young man, who now drew his sword
+also. There were no clouds; the moon was full; the evening
+promised well.
+
+Scarcely had the flash of thin rapiers crossing each other by
+moonlight begun to gleam in the street when Morano appeared beside
+them and stood there watching. He had bought his bacon and gone
+straight to the house with the balcony. For though he knew no
+Latin he had not missed the silent greeting that had welcomed his
+master to that village, or failed to interpret the gist of the
+words that Rodriguez' dumb glance would have said. He stood there
+watching while each combatant stood his ground.
+
+And Rodriguez remembered all those passes and feints that he had
+had from his father, and which Sevastiani, a master of arms in
+Madrid, had taught in his father's youth: and some were famous and
+some were little known. And all these passes, as he tried them one
+by one, his unknown antagonist parried. And for a moment Rodriguez
+feared that Morano would see those passes in which he trusted
+foiled by that unknown sword, and then he reflected that Morano
+knew nothing of the craft of the rapier, and with more content at
+that thought he parried thrusts that were strange to him. But
+something told Morano that in this fight the stranger was master
+and that along that pale-blue, moonlit, unknown sword lurked a
+sure death for Rodriguez. He moved from his place of vantage and
+was soon lost in large shadows; while the rapiers played and blade
+rippled on blade with a sound as though Death were gently
+sharpening his scythe in the dark. And now Rodriguez was giving
+ground, now his antagonist pressed him; thrusts that he believed
+invincible had failed; now he parried wearily and had at once to
+parry again; the unknown pressed on, was upon him, was scattering
+his weakening parries; drew back his rapier for a deadlier pass,
+learned in a secret school, in a hut on mountains he knew, and
+practised surely; and fell in a heap upon Rodriguez' feet, struck
+full on the back of the head by Morano's frying-pan.
+
+"Most vile knave," shouted Rodriguez as he saw Morano before him
+with his frying-pan in his hand, and with something of the stupid
+expression that you see on the face of a dog that has done some
+foolish thing which it thinks will delight its master.
+
+"Master! I am your servant," said Morano.
+
+"Vile, miserable knave," replied Rodriguez.
+
+"Master," Morano said plaintively, "shall I see to your comforts,
+your food, and not to your life?"
+
+"Silence," thundered Rodriguez as he stooped anxiously to his
+antagonist, who was not unconscious but only very giddy and who
+now rose to his feet with the help of Rodriguez.
+
+"Alas, senor," said Rodriguez, "the foul knave is my servant. He
+shall be flogged. He shall be flayed. His vile flesh shall be cut
+off him. Does the hurt pain you, senor? Sit and rest while I beat
+the knave, and then we will continue our meeting."
+
+And he ran to his kerchief on which rested his mandolin and laid
+it upon the dust for the stranger.
+
+"No, no," said he. "My head clears again. It is nothing."
+
+"But rest, senor, rest," said Rodriguez. "It is always well to
+rest before an encounter. Rest while I punish the knave."
+
+And he led him to where the kerchief lay on the ground. "Let me
+see the hurt, senor," he continued. And the stranger removed his
+plumed hat as Rodriguez compelled him to sit down. He straightened
+out the hat as he sat, and the hurt was shown to be of no great
+consequence.
+
+"The blessed Saints be praised," Rodriguez said. "It need not stop
+our encounter. But rest awhile, senor."
+
+"Indeed, it is nothing," he answered.
+
+"But the indignity is immeasurable," sighed Rodriguez. "Would you
+care, senor, when you are well rested to give the chastisement
+yourself?"
+
+"As far as that goes," said the stranger, "I can chastise him
+now."
+
+"If you are fully recovered, senor," Rodriguez said, "my own sword
+is at your disposal to beat him sore with the flat of it, or how
+you will. Thus no dishonour shall touch your sword from the skin
+of so vile a knave."
+
+The stranger smiled: the idea appealed to him.
+
+"You make a noble amend, senor," he said as he bowed over
+Rodriguez' proffered sword.
+
+Morano had not moved far, but stood near, wondering. "What should
+a servant do if not work for his master?" he wondered. And how
+work for him when dead? And dead, as it seemed to Morano, through
+his own fault if he allowed any man to kill him when he perceived
+him about to do so. He stood there puzzled. And suddenly he saw
+the stranger coming angrily towards him in the clear moonlight
+with a sword. Morano was frightened.
+
+As the hidalgo came up to him he stretched out his left hand to
+seize Morano by the shoulder. Up went the frying-pan, the stranger
+parried, but against a stroke that no school taught or knew, and
+for the second time he went down in the dust with a reeling head.
+Rodriguez turned toward Morano and said to him ... No, realism is
+all very well, and I know that my duty as author is to tell all
+that happened, and I could win mighty praise as a bold,
+unconventional writer; at the same time, some young lady will be
+reading all this next year in some far country, or in twenty years
+in England, and I would sooner she should not read what Rodriguez
+said. I do not, I trust, disappoint her. But the gist of it was
+that he should leave that place now and depart from his service
+for ever. And hearing those words Morano turned mournfully away
+and was at once lost in the darkness. While Rodriguez ran once
+more to help his fallen antagonist. "Senor, senor," he said with
+an emotion that some wearing centuries and a cold climate have
+taught us not to show, and beyond those words he could find no
+more to say.
+
+"Giddy, only giddy," said the stranger.
+
+A tear fell on his forehead as Rodriguez helped him to his feet.
+
+"Senor," Rodriguez said fervently, "we will finish our encounter
+come what may. The knave is gone and ..."
+
+"But I am somewhat giddy," said the other.
+
+"I will take off one of my shoes," said Rodriguez, "leaving the
+other on. It will equalise our unsteadiness, and you shall not be
+disappointed in our encounter. Come," he added kindly.
+
+"I cannot see so clearly as before," the young hidalgo murmured.
+
+"I will bandage my right eye also," said Rodriguez, "and if this
+cannot equalise it ..."
+
+"It is a most fair offer," said the young man.
+
+"I could not bear that you should be disappointed of your
+encounter," Rodriguez said, "by this spirit of Hell that has got
+itself clothed in fat and dares to usurp the dignity of man."
+
+"It is a right fair offer," the young man said again.
+
+"Rest yourself, senor," said Rodriguez, "while I take off my
+shoe," and he indicated his kerchief which was still on the
+ground.
+
+The stranger sat down a little wearily, and Rodriguez sitting upon
+the dust took off his left shoe. And now he began to think a
+little wistfully of the face that had shone from that balcony,
+where all was dark now in black shadow unlit by the moon. The
+emptiness of the balcony and its darkness oppressed him; for he
+could scarcely hope to survive an encounter with that swordsman,
+whose skill he now recognised as being of a different class from
+his own, a class of which he knew nothing. All his own feints and
+passes were known, while those of his antagonist had been strange
+and new, and he might well have even others. The stranger's
+giddiness did not alter the situation, for Rodriguez knew that his
+handicap was fair and even generous. He believed he was near his
+grave, and could see no spark of light to banish that dark belief;
+yet more chances than we can see often guard us on such occasions.
+The absence of Serafina saddened him like a sorrowful sunset.
+
+Rodriguez rose and limped with his one shoe off to the stranger,
+who was sitting upon his kerchief.
+
+"I will bandage my right eye now, senor," he said.
+
+The young man rose and shook the dust from the kerchief and gave
+it to Rodriguez with a renewed expression of his gratitude at the
+fairness of the strange handicap. When Rodriguez had bandaged his
+eye the stranger returned his sword to him, which he had held in
+his hand since his effort to beat Morano, and drawing his own
+stepped back a few paces from him. Rodriguez took one hopeless
+look at the balcony, saw it as empty and as black as ever, then he
+faced his antagonist, waiting.
+
+"Bandage one eye, indeed!" muttered Morano as he stepped up behind
+the stranger and knocked him down for the third time with a blow
+over the head from his frying-pan.
+
+The young hidalgo dropped silently.
+
+Rodriguez uttered one scream of anger and rushed at Morano with
+his sword. Morano had already started to run; and, knowing well
+that he was running for his life, he kept for awhile the start
+that he had of the rapier. Rodriguez knew that no plump man of
+over forty could last against his lithe speed long. He saw Morano
+clearly before him, then lost sight of him for a moment and ran
+confidently on pursuing. He ran on and on. And at last he
+recognised that Morano had slipped into the darkness, which lies
+always so near to the moonlight, and was not in front of him at
+all. So he returned to his fallen antagonist and found him
+breathing heavily where he fell, scarcely conscious. The third
+stroke of the frying-pan had done its work surely. Rodriguez' fury
+died down, only because it is difficult to feel two emotions at
+once: it died down as pity took its place, though every now and
+then it would suddenly flare and fall again. He returned his sword
+and lifted the young hidalgo and carried him to the door of the
+house under which they had fought.
+
+With one fist he beat on the door without putting the hurt man
+down, and continued to hit it until steps were heard, and bolts
+began to grumble, as though disturbed too early from their rusty
+sleep in stone sockets.
+
+The door of the house with the balcony was opened by a servant
+who, when he saw who it was that Rodriguez carried, fled into the
+house in alarm, as one who runs with bad news. He carried one
+candle and, when he had disappeared with the steaming flame,
+Rodriguez found himself in a long hall lit by the moonlight only,
+which was looking in through the small contorted panes of the
+upper part of a high window. Alone with echoes and shadows
+Rodriguez carried the hurt man through the hall, who was muttering
+now as he came back to consciousness. And, as he went, there came
+to Rodriguez thoughts between wonder and hope, for he had had no
+thought at all when he beat on the door except to get shelter and
+help for the hurt man. At the end of the hall they came to an open
+door that led into a chamber partly shining with moonlight.
+
+"In there," said the man that he carried.
+
+Rodriguez carried him in and laid him on a long couch at the end
+of the room. Large pictures of men in the blackness, out of the
+moon's rays, frowned at Rodriguez mysteriously. He could not see
+their faces in the darkness, but he somehow knew they frowned. Two
+portraits that were clear in the moonlight eyed him with absolute
+apathy. So cold a welcome from that house's past generations boded
+no good to him from those that dwelt there today. Rodriguez knew
+that in carrying the hurt man there he helped at a Christian deed;
+and yet there was no putting the merits of the case against the
+omens that crowded the chamber, lurking along the edge of
+moonlight and darkness, disappearing and reappearing till the
+gloom was heavy with portent. The omens knew. In a weak voice and
+few words the hurt man thanked him, but the apathetic faces seemed
+to say What of that? And the frowning faces that he could not see
+still filled the darkness with anger.
+
+And then from the end of the chamber, dressed in white, and all
+shining with moonlight, came Serafina.
+
+Rodriguez in awed silence watched her come. He saw her pass
+through the moonlight and grow dimmer, and glide to the moonlight
+again that streamed through another window. A great dim golden
+circle appeared at the far end of the chamber whence she had come,
+as the servent returned with his candle and held it high to give
+light for Dona Serafina. But that one flame seemed to make the
+darkness only blacker; and for any cheerfulness it brought to the
+gloom it had better never have challenged those masses of darkness
+at all in that high chamber among the brooding portraits it seemed
+trivial, ephemeral, modern, ill able to cope with the power of
+ancient things, dead days and forgotten voices, which make their
+home in the darkness because the days that have usurped them have
+stolen the light of the sun.
+
+And there the man stood holding his candle high, and the rays of
+the moon became more magical still beside that little mundane,
+flickering thing. And Serafina was moving through the moonlight as
+though its rays were her sisters, which she met noiselessly and
+brightly upon some island, as it seemed to Rodriguez, beyond the
+costs of Earth, so quietly and so brightly did her slender figure
+move and so aloof from him appeared her eyes. And there came on
+Rodriguez that feeling that some deride and that others explain
+away, the feeling of which romance is mainly made and which is the
+aim and goal of all the earth. And his love for Serafina seemed to
+him not only to be an event in his life but to have some part in
+veiled and shadowy destinies and to have the blessing of most
+distant days: grey beards seemed to look out of graves in
+forgotten places to wag approval: hands seemed to beckon to him
+out of far-future times, where faces were smiling quietly: and,
+dreaming on further still, this vast approval that gave
+benediction to his heart's youthful fancy seemed to widen and
+widen like the gold of a summer's evening or, the humming of bees
+in summer in endless rows of limes, until it became a part of the
+story of man. Spring days of his earliest memory seemed to have
+their part in it, as well as wonderful evenings of days that were
+yet to be, till his love for Serafina was one with the fate of
+earth; and, wandering far on their courses, he knew that the stars
+blessed it. But Serafina went up to the man on the couch with no
+look for Rodriguez.
+
+With no look for Rodriguez she bent over the stricken hidalgo. He
+raised himself a little on one elbow. "It is nothing," he said,
+"Serafina."
+
+Still she bent over him. He laid his head down again, but now with
+open and undimmed eyes. She put her hand to his forehead, she
+spoke in a low voice to him; she lavished upon him sympathy for
+which Rodriguez would have offered his head to swords; and all,
+thought Rodriguez for three blows from a knave's frying-pan: and
+his anger against Morano flared up again fiercely. Then there came
+another thought to him out of the shadows, where Serafina was
+standing all white, a figure of solace. Who was this man who so
+mysteriously blended with the other unknown things that haunted
+the gloom of that chamber? Why had he fought him at night? What
+was he to Serafina? Thoughts crowded up to him from the interior
+of the darkness, sombre and foreboding as the shadows that nursed
+them. He stood there never daring to speak to Serafina; looking
+for permission to speak, such as a glance might give. And no
+glance came.
+
+And now, as though soothed by her beauty, the hurt man closed his
+eyes. Serafina stood beside him anxious and silent, gleaming in
+that dim place. The servant at the far end of the chamber still
+held his one candle high, as though some light of earth were
+needed against the fantastic moon, which if unopposed would give
+everything over to magic. Rodriguez stood there, scarcely
+breathing. All was silent. And then through the door by which
+Serafina had come, past that lonely, golden, moon-defying candle,
+all down the long room across moonlight and blackness, came the
+lady of the house, Serafina's mother. She came, as Serafina came,
+straight toward the man on the couch, giving no look to Rodriguez,
+walking something as Serafina walked, with the same poise, the
+same dignity, though the years had carried away from her the grace
+Serafina had: so that, though you saw that they were mother and
+daughter, the elder lady called to mind the lovely things of
+earth, large gardens at evening, statues dim in the dusk, summer
+and whatsoever binds us to earthly things; but Serafina turned
+Rodriguez' thoughts to the twilight in which he first saw her, and
+he pictured her native place as far from here, in mellow fields
+near the moon, wherein she had walked on twilight outlasting any
+we know, with all delicate things of our fancy, too fair for the
+rugged earth.
+
+As the lady approached the couch upon which the young man was
+lying, and still no look was turned towards Rodriguez, his young
+dreams fled as butterflies sailing high in the heat of June that
+are suddenly plunged in night by a total eclipse of the sun. He
+had never spoken to Serafina, or seen before her mother, and they
+did not know his name; he knew that he, Rodriguez, had no claim to
+a welcome. But his dreams had flocked so much about Serafina's
+face, basking so much in her beauty, that they now fell back
+dying; and when a man's dreams die what remains, if he lingers
+awhile behind them?
+
+Rodriguez suddenly felt that his left shoe was off and his right
+eye still bandaged, things that he had not noticed while his only
+thought was for the man he carried to shelter, but torturing his
+consciousness now that he thought of himself. He opened his lips
+to explain; but before words came to him, looking at the face of
+Serafina's mother, standing now by the couch, he felt that, not
+knowing how, he had somehow wronged the Penates of this house, or
+whatever was hid in the dimness of that long chamber, by carrying
+in this young man there to rest from his hurt.
+
+Rodriguez' depression arose from these causes, but having arisen,
+it grew of its own might: he had had nothing to eat since morning,
+and in the favouring atmosphere of hunger his depression grew
+gigantic. He opened his lips once more to say farewell, was
+oppressed by all manner of thoughts that held him dumb, and turned
+away in silence and left the house. Outside he recovered his
+mandolin and his shoe. He was tired with the weariness of defeated
+dreams that slept in his spirit exhausted, rather than with any
+fatigue his young muscles had from the journey. He needed sleep;
+he looked at the shuttered houses; then at the soft dust of the
+road in which dogs lay during the daylight. But the dust was near
+to his mood, so he lay down where he had fought the unknown
+hidalgo. A light wind wandered the street like a visitor come to
+the village out of a friendly valley, but Rodriguez' four days on
+the roads had made him familiar with all wandering things, and the
+breeze on his forehead troubled him not at all: before it had
+wearied of wandering in the night Rodriguez had fallen asleep.
+Just by the edge of sleep, upon which side he knew not, he heard
+the window of the balcony creak, and looked up wide awake all in a
+moment. But nothing stirred in the darkness of the balcony and the
+window was fast shut. So whatever sound came from the window came
+not from its opening but shutting: for a while he wondered; and
+then his tired thoughts rested, and that was sleep.
+
+A light rain woke Rodriguez, drizzling upon his face; the first
+light rain that had fallen in a romantic tale. Storms there had
+been, lashing oaks to terrific shapes seen at night by flashes of
+lightning, through which villains rode abroad or heroes sought
+shelter at midnight; hurricanes there had been, flapping huge
+cloaks, fierce hail and copious snow; but until now no drizzle. It
+was morning; dawn was old; and pale and grey and unhappy.
+
+The balcony above him, still empty, scarcely even held romance
+now. Rain dripped from it sadly. Its cheerless bareness seemed
+worse than the most sinister shadows of night.
+
+And then Rodriguez saw a rose lying on the ground beside him. And
+for all the dreams, fancies, and hopes that leaped up in
+Rodriguez' mind, rising and falling and fading, one thing alone he
+knew and all the rest was mystery: the rose had lain there before
+the rain had fallen. Beneath the rose was white dust, while all
+around it the dust was turning grey with rain.
+
+Rodriguez tried to guess how long the rain had fallen. The rose
+may have lain beside him all night long. But the shadows of
+mystery receded no farther than this one fact that the rose was
+there before the rain began. No sign of any kind came from the
+house.
+
+Rodriguez put the rose safe under his coat, wrapped in the
+kerchief that had guarded the mandolin, to carry it far from
+Lowlight, through places familiar with roses and places strange to
+them; but it remained for him a thing of mystery until a day far
+from then.
+
+Sadly he left the house in the sad rain, marching away alone to
+look for his wars.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SEVENTH CHRONICLE
+
+HOW HE CAME TO SHADOW VALLEY
+
+
+Rodriguez still believed it to be the duty of any Christian man to
+kill Morano. Yet, more than comfort, more than dryness, he missed
+Morano's cheerful chatter, and his philosophy into which all
+occasions so easily slipped. Upon his first day's journey all was
+new; the very anemones kept him company; but now he made the
+discovery that lonely roads are long.
+
+When he had suggested food or rest Morano had fallen in with his
+wishes; when he had suggested winning a castle in vague wars
+Morano had agreed with him. Now he had dismissed Morano and had
+driven him away at the rapier's point. There was no one now either
+to cook his food or to believe in the schemes his ambition made.
+There was no one now to speak of the wars as the natural end of
+the journey. Alone in the rain the wars seemed far away and
+castles hard to come by. The unromantic rain in which no dreams
+thrive fell on and on.
+
+The village of Lowlight was some way behind him, as he went with
+mournful thoughts through the drizzling rain, when he caught the
+smell of bacon. He looked for a house but the plain was bare
+except for small bushes. He looked up wind, which was blowing from
+the west, whence came the unmistakable smell of bacon: and there
+was a small fire smoking greyly against a bush; and the fat figure
+crouching beside it, although the face was averted, was clearly
+none but Morano. And when Rodriguez saw that he was tenderly
+holding the infamous frying-pan, the very weapon that had done the
+accursed deed, then he almost felt righteous anger; but that
+frying-pan held other memories too, and Rodriguez felt less fury
+than what he thought he felt. As for killing Morano, Rodriguez
+believed, or thought he believed, that he was too far from the
+road for it to be possible to overtake him to mete out his just
+punishment. As for the bacon, Rodriguez scorned it and marched on
+down the road. Now one side of the frying-pan was very hot, for it
+was tilted a little and the lard had run sideways. By tilting it
+back again slowly Morano could make the fat run back bit by bit
+over the heated metal, and whenever it did so it sizzled. He now
+picked up the frying-pan and one log that was burning well and
+walked parallel with Rodriguez. He was up-wind of him, and
+whenever the bacon-fat sizzled Rodriguez caught the smell of it. A
+small matter to inspire thoughts; but Rodriguez had eaten nothing
+since the morning before, and ideas surged through his head; and
+though they began with moral indignation they adapted themselves
+more and more to hunger, until there came the idea that since his
+money had bought the bacon the food was rightfully his, and he had
+every right to eat it wherever he found it. So much can slaves
+sometimes control the master, and the body rule the brain.
+
+So Rodriguez suddenly turned and strode up to Morano. "My bacon,"
+he said.
+
+"Master," Morano said, for it was beginning to cool, "let me make
+another small fire."
+
+"Knave, call me not master," said Rodriguez.
+
+Morano, who knew when speech was good, was silent now, and blew on
+the smouldering end of the log he carried and gathered a handful
+of twigs and shook the rain off them; and soon had a small fire
+again, warming the bacon. He had nothing to say which bacon could
+not say better. And when Rodriguez had finished up the bacon he
+carefully reconsidered the case of Morano, and there were points
+in it which he had not thought of before. He reflected that for
+the execution of knaves a suitable person was provided. He should
+perhaps give Morano up to la Garda. His next thought was where to
+find la Garda. And easily enough another thought followed that
+one, which was that although on foot and still some way behind
+four of la Garda were trying to find him. Rodriguez' mind, which
+was looking at life from the point of view of a judge, changed
+somewhat at this thought. He reflected next that, for the
+prevention of crime, to make Morano see the true nature of his
+enormity so that he should never commit it again might after all
+be as good as killing him. So what we call his better nature, his
+calmer judgment, decided him now to talk to Morano and not to kill
+him: but Morano, looking back upon this merciful change, always
+attributed it to fried bacon.
+
+"Morano," said Rodriguez' better nature, "to offend the laws of
+Chivalry is to have against you the swords of all true men."
+
+"Master," Morano said, "that were dreadful odds."
+
+"And rightly," said Rodriguez.
+
+"Master," said Morano, "I will keep those laws henceforth. I may
+cook bacon for you when you are hungry, I may brush the dust from
+your cloak, I may see to your comforts. This Chivalry forbids none
+of that. But when I see anyone trying to kill you, master; why,
+kill you he must, and welcome."
+
+"Not always," said Rodriguez somewhat curtly, for it struck him
+that Morano spoke somehow too lightly of sacred things.
+
+"Not always?" asked Morano.
+
+"No," said Rodriguez.
+
+"Master, I implore you tell me," said Morano, "when they may kill
+you and when they may not, so that I may never offend again."
+
+Rodriguez cast a swift glance at him but found his face so full of
+puzzled anxiety that he condescended to do what Morano had asked,
+and began to explain to him the rudiments of the laws of Chivalry.
+
+"In the wars," he said, "you may defend me whoever assails me, or
+if robbers or any common persons attack me, but if I arrange a
+meeting with a gentleman, and any knave basely interferes, then is
+he damned hereafter as well as accursed now; for, the laws of
+Chivalry being founded on true religion, the penalty for their
+breach is by no means confined to this world."
+
+"Master," replied Morano thoughtfully, "if I be not damned already
+I will avoid those fires of Hell; and none shall kill you that you
+have not chosen to kill you, and those that you choose shall kill
+you whenever you have a mind."
+
+Rodriguez opened his lips to correct Morano but reflected that,
+though in his crude and base-born way, he had correctly
+interpreted the law so far as his mind was able.
+
+So he briefly said "Yes," and rose and returned to the road,
+giving Morano no order to follow him; and this was the last
+concession he made to the needs of Chivalry on account of the sin
+of Morano. Morano gathered up the frying-pan and followed
+Rodriguez, and when they came to the road he walked behind him in
+silence.
+
+For three or four miles they walked thus, Morano knowing that he
+followed on sufferance and calling no attention to himself with
+his garrulous tongue. But at the end of an hour the rain lifted;
+and with the coming out of the sun Morano talked again.
+
+"Master," he said, "the next man that you choose to kill you, let
+him be one too base-born to know the tricks of the rapier, too
+ignorant to do aught but wish you well, some poor fat fool over
+forty who shall be too heavy to elude your rapier's point and too
+elderly for it to matter when you kill him at your Chivalry, the
+best of life being gone already at forty-five."
+
+"There is timber here," said Rodriguez. "We will have some more
+bacon while you dry my cloak over a fire."
+
+Thus he acknowledged Morano again for his servant but never
+acknowledged that in Morano's words he had understood any poor
+sketch of Morano's self, or that the words went to his heart.
+
+"Timber, Master?" said Morano, though it did not need Rodriguez to
+point out the great oaks that now began to stand beside their
+journey, but he saw that the other matter was well and thus he
+left well alone.
+
+Rodriguez waved an arm towards the great trees. "Yes, indeed,"
+said Morano, and began to polish up the frying-pan as he walked.
+
+Rodriguez, who missed little, caught a glimpse of tears in
+Morano's eyes, for all that his head was turned downward over the
+frying-pan; yet he said nothing, for he knew that forgiveness was
+all that Morano needed, and that he had now given him: and it was
+much to give, reflected Rodriguez, for so great a crime, and
+dismissed the matter from his mind.
+
+And now their road dipped downhill, and they passed a huge oak and
+then another. More and more often now they met these solitary
+giants, till their view began to be obscured by them. The road
+dwindled till it was no better than a track, the earth beside it
+was wild and rocky; Rodriguez wondered to what manner of land he
+was coming. But continually the branches of some tree obscured his
+view and the only indication he had of it was from the road he
+trod, which seemed to tell him that men came here seldom. Beyond
+every huge tree that they passed as they went downhill Rodriguez
+hoped to get a better view, but always there stood another to
+close the vista. It was some while before he realised that he had
+entered a forest. They were come to Shadow Valley.
+
+The grandeur of this place, penetrated by shafts of sunlight,
+coloured by flashes of floating butterflies, filled by the chaunt
+of birds rising over the long hum of insects, lifted the fallen
+spirits of Rodriguez as he walked on through the morning.
+
+He still would not have exchanged his rose for the whole forest;
+but in the mighty solemnity of the forest his mourning for the
+lady that he feared he had lost no longer seemed the only solemn
+thing: indeed, the sombre forest seemed well attuned to his mood;
+and what complaint have we against Fate wherever this is so. His
+mood was one of tragic loss, the defeat of an enterprise that his
+hopes had undertaken, to seize victory on the apex of the world,
+to walk all his days only just outside the edge of Paradise, for
+no less than that his hopes and his first love promised each
+other; and then he walked despairing in small rain. In this mood
+Fate had led him to solemn old oaks standing huge among shadows;
+and the grandeur of their grey grip on the earth that had been
+theirs for centuries was akin to the grandeur of the high hopes he
+had had, and his despair was somehow soothed by the shadows. And
+then the impudent birds seemed to say "Hope again."
+
+They walked for miles into the forest and lit a fire before noon,
+for Rodriguez had left Lowlight very early. And by it Morano
+cooked bacon again and dried his master's cloak. They ate the
+bacon and sat by the fire till all their clothes were dry, and
+when the flames from the great logs fell and only embers glowed
+they sat there still, with hands spread to the warmth of the
+embers; for to those who wander a fire is food and rest and
+comfort. Only as the embers turned grey did they throw earth over
+their fire and continue their journey. Their road grew smaller and
+the forest denser.
+
+They had walked some miles from the place where they lit their
+fire, when a somewhat unmistakable sound made Rodriguez look ahead
+of him. An arrow had struck a birch tree on the right side, ten or
+twelve paces in front of him; and as he looked up another struck
+it from the opposite side just level with the first; the two were
+sticking in it ten feet or so from the ground. Rodriguez drew his
+sword. But when a third arrow went over his head from behind and
+struck the birch tree, whut! just between the other two, he
+perceived, as duller minds could have done, that it was a hint,
+and he returned his sword and stood still. Morano questioned his
+master with his eyes, which were asking what was to be done next.
+But Rodriguez shrugged his shoulders: there was no fighting with
+an invisible foe that could shoot like that. That much Morano
+knew, but he did not know that there might not be some law of
+Chivalry that would demand that Rodriguez should wave his sword in
+the air or thrust at the birch tree until someone shot him. When
+there seemed to be no such rule Morano was well content. And
+presently men came quietly on to the road from different parts of
+the wood. They were dressed in brown leather and wore leaf-green
+hats, and round each one's neck hung a disk of engraved copper.
+They came up to the travellers carrying bows, and the leader said
+to Rodriguez:
+
+"Senor, all travellers here bring tribute to the King of Shadow
+Valley," at the mention of whom all touched hats and bowed their
+heads. "What do you bring us?"
+
+Rodriguez thought of no answer; but after a moment he said, for
+the sake of loyalty: "I know one king only."
+
+"There is only one king in Shadow Valley," said the bowman.
+
+"He brings a tribute of emeralds," said another, looking at
+Rodriguez' scabbard. And then they searched him and others search
+Morano. There were eight or nine of them, all in their leaf-green
+hats, with ribbons round their necks of the same colour to hold
+the copper disks. They took a gold coin from Morano and grey
+greasy pieces of silver. One of them took his frying-pan; but he
+looked so pitifully at them as he said simply, "I starve," that
+the frying-pan was restored to him.
+
+They unbuckled Rodriguez' belt and took from him sword and
+scabbard and three gold pieces from his purse. Next they found the
+gold piece that was hanging round his neck, still stuffed inside
+his clothes where he had put it when he was riding. Having
+examined it they put it back inside his clothes, while the leader
+rebuckled his sword-belt about his waist and returned him his
+three gold-pieces.
+
+Others returned his money to Morano. "Master," said the leader,
+bowing to Rodriguez, his green hat in hand, "under our King, the
+forest is yours."
+
+Morano was pleased to hear this respect paid to his master, but
+Rodriguez was so surprised that he who was never curt without
+reason found no more to say than "Why?"
+
+"Because we are your servants," said the other.
+
+"Who are you?" asked Rodriguez.
+
+"We are the green bowmen, master," he said, "who hold this forest
+against all men for our King."
+
+"And who is he?" said Rodriguez.
+
+And the bowman answered: "The King of Shadow Valley," at which the
+others all touched hats and bowed heads again. And Rodriguez
+seeing that the mystery would grow no clearer for any information
+to be had from them said: "Conduct me to your king."
+
+"That, master, we cannot do," said the chief of the bowmen. "There
+be many trees in this forest, and behind any one of them he holds
+his court. When he needs us there is his clear horn. But when men
+need him who knows which shadow is his of all that lie in the
+forest?" Whether or not there was anything interesting in the
+mystery, to Rodriguez it was merely annoying; and finding it grew
+no clearer he turned his attention to shelter for the night, to
+which all travellers give a thought at least once, between noon
+and sunset.
+
+"Is there any house on this road, senor," he said, "in which we
+could rest the night?"
+
+"Ten miles from here," said he, "and not far from the road you
+take is the best house we have in the forest. It is yours, master,
+for as long as you honour it."
+
+"Come then," said Rodriguez, "and I thank you, senor."
+
+So they all started together, Rodriguez with the leader going in
+front and Morano following with all the bowmen. And soon the
+bowmen were singing songs of the forest, hunting songs, songs of
+the winter; and songs of the long summer evenings, songs of love.
+Cheered by this merriment, the miles slipped by.
+
+And Rodriguez gathered from the songs they sang something of what
+they were and of how they lived in the forest, living amongst the
+woodland creatures till these men's ways were almost as their
+ways; killing what they needed for food but protecting the
+woodland things against all others; straying out amongst the
+villages in summer evenings, and always welcome; and owning no
+allegiance but to the King of the Shadow Valley.
+
+And the leader told Rodriguez that his name was Miguel Threegeese,
+given him on account of an exploit in his youth when he lay one
+night with his bow by one of the great pools in the forest, where
+the geese come in winter. He said the forest was a hundred miles
+long, lying mostly along a great valley, which they were crossing.
+And once they had owned allegiance to kings of Spain, but now to
+none but the King of the Shadow Valley, for the King of Spain's
+men had once tried to cut some of the forest down, and the forest
+was sacred.
+
+Behind him the men sang on of woodland things, and of cottage
+gardens in the villages: with singing and laughter they came to
+their journey's end. A cottage as though built by peasants with
+boundless material stood in the forest. It was a thatched cottage
+built in the peasant's way but of enormous size. The leader
+entered first and whispered to those within, who rose and bowed to
+Rodriguez as he entered, twenty more bowmen who had been sitting
+at a table. One does not speak of the banqueting-hall of a
+cottage, but such it appeared, for it occupied more than half of
+the cottage and was as large as the banqueting-hall of any castle.
+It was made of great beams of oak, and high at either end just
+under the thatch were windows with their little square panes of
+bulging bluish glass, which at that time was rare in Spain. A
+table of oak ran down the length of it, cut from a single tree,
+polished and dark from the hands of many men that had sat at it.
+Boar spears hung on the wall, great antlers and boar's tusks and,
+carved in the oak of the wall and again on a high, dark chair that
+stood at the end of the long table empty, a crown with oak leaves
+that Rodriguez recognised. It was the same as the one that was cut
+on his gold coin, which he had given no further thought to, riding
+to Lowlight, and which the face of Serafina had driven from his
+mind altogether. "But," he said, and then was silent, thinking to
+learn more by watching than by talking. And his companions of the
+road came in and all sat down on the benches beside the ample
+table, and a brew was brought, a kind of pale mead, that they
+called forest water. And all drank; and, sitting at the table,
+watching them more closely than he could as he walked in the
+forest, Rodriguez saw by the sunlight that streamed in low through
+one window that on the copper disks they wore round their necks on
+green ribbon the design was again the same. It was much smaller
+than his on the gold coin but the same strange leafy crown. "Wear
+it as you go through Shadow Valley," he now seemed to remember the
+man saying to him who put it round his neck. But why? Clearly
+because it was the badge of this band of men. And this other man
+was one of them.
+
+His eyes strayed back to the great design on the wall. "The crown
+of the forest," said Miguel as he saw his eyes wondering at it,
+"as you doubtless know, senor."
+
+Why should he know? Of course because he bore the design himself.
+"Who wears it?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"The King of Shadow Valley."
+
+Morano was without curiosity; he did not question good drink; he
+sat at the table with a cup of horn in his hand, as happy as
+though he had come to his master's castle, though that had not yet
+been won.
+
+The sun sank under the oaks, filling the hall with a ruddy glow,
+turning the boar spears scarlet and reddening the red faces of the
+merry men of the bow.
+
+A dozen of the men went out; to relieve the guard in the forest,
+Miguel explained. And Rodriguez learned that he had come through a
+line of sentries without ever seeing one. Presently a dozen others
+came in from their posts and unslung their bows and laid them on
+pegs on the wall and sat down at the table. Whereat there were
+whispered words and they all rose and bowed to Rodriguez. And
+Rodriguez had caught the words "A prince of the forest." What did
+it mean?
+
+Soon the long hall grew dim, and his love for the light drew
+Rodriguez out to watch the sunset. And there was the sun under
+indescribable clouds, turning huge and yellow among the trunks of
+the trees and casting glory munificently down glades. It set, and
+the western sky became blood-red and lilac: from the other end of
+the sky the moon peeped out of night. A hush came and a chill, and
+a glory of colour, and a dying away of light; and in the hush the
+mystery of the great oaks became magical. A blackbird blew a tune
+less of this earth than of fairy-land.
+
+Rodriguez wished that he could have had a less ambition than to
+win a castle in the wars, for in those glades and among those oaks
+he felt that happiness might be found under roofs of thatch. But
+having come by his ambition he would not desert it.
+
+Now rushlights were lit in the great cottage and the window of the
+long room glowed yellow. A fountain fell in the stillness that he
+had not heard before. An early nightingale tuned a tentative note.
+"The forest is fair, is it not?" said Miguel.
+
+Rodriguez had no words to say. To turn into words the beauty that
+was now shining in his thoughts, reflected from the evening there,
+was no easier than for wood to reflect all that is seen in the
+mirror.
+
+"You love the forest," he said at last.
+
+"Master," said Miguel, "it is the only land in which we should
+live our days. There are cities and roads but man is not meant for
+them. I know not, master, what God intends about us; but in cities
+we are against the intention at every step, while here, why, we
+drift along with it."
+
+"I, too, would live here always," said Rodriguez.
+
+"The house is yours," said Miguel. And Rodriguez answered: "I go
+tomorrow to the wars."
+
+They turned round then and walked slowly back to the cottage, and
+entered the candlelight and the loud talk of many men out of the
+hush of the twilight. But they passed from the room at once by a
+door on the left, and came thus to a large bedroom, the only other
+room in the cottage.
+
+"Your room, master," said Miguel Threegeese.
+
+It was not so big as the hall where the bowmen sat, but it was a
+goodly room. The bed was made of carved wood, for there were
+craftsmen in the forest, and a hunt went all the way round it with
+dogs and deer. Four great posts held a canopy over it: they were
+four young birch-trees seemingly still wearing their bright bark,
+but this had been painted on their bare timber by some woodland
+artist. The chairs had not the beauty of the great ages of
+furniture, but they had a dignity that the age of commerce has not
+dreamed of. Each one was carved out of a single block of wood:
+there was no join in them anywhere. One of them lasts to this day.
+
+The skins of deer covered the long walls. There were great basins
+and jugs of earthenware. All was forest-made. The very shadows
+whispering among themselves in corners spoke of the forest. The
+room was rude; but being without ornament, except for the work of
+simple craftsmen, it had nothing there to offend the sense of
+right of anyone entering its door, by any jarring conflict with
+the purposes and traditions of the land in which it stood. All the
+woodland spirits might have entered there, and slept--if spirits
+sleep--in the great bed, and left at dawn unoffended. In fact that
+age had not yet learned vulgarity.
+
+When Miguel Threegeese left Morano entered.
+
+"Master," he said, "they are making a banquet for you."
+
+"Good," said Rodriguez. "We will eat it." And he waited to hear
+what Morano had come to say, for he could see that it was more
+than this.
+
+"Master," said Morano, "I have been talking with the bowman. And
+they will give you whatever you ask. They are good people, master,
+and they will give you all things, whatever you asked of them."
+
+Rodriguez would not show to his servant that it all still puzzled
+him.
+
+"They are very amiable men," he said.
+
+"Master," said Morano, coming to the point, "that Garda, they will
+have walked after us. They must be now in Lowlight. They have all
+to-night to get new shoes on their horses. And to-morrow, master,
+to-morrow, if we be still on foot..."
+
+Rodriguez was thinking. Morano seemed to him to be talking sense.
+
+"You would like another ride?" he said to Morano.
+
+"Master," he answered, "riding is horrible. But the public
+garrotter, he is a bad thing too." And he meditatively stroked the
+bristles under his chin.
+
+"They would give us horses?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"Anything, master, I am sure of it. They are good people."
+
+"They'll have news of the road by which they left Lowlight," said
+Rodriguez reflectively. "They say la Garda dare not enter the
+forest," Morano continued, "but thirty miles from here the forest
+ends. They could ride round while we go through."
+
+"They would give us horses?" said Rodriguez again.
+
+"Surely," said Morano.
+
+And then Rodriguez asked where they cooked the banquet, since he
+saw that there were only two rooms in the great cottage and his
+inquiring eye saw no preparations for cooking about the fireplace
+of either. And Morano pointed through a window at the back of the
+room to another cottage among the trees, fifty paces away. A red
+glow streamed from its windows, growing strong in the darkening
+forest.
+
+"That is their kitchen, master," he said. "The whole house is
+kitchen." His eyes looked eagerly at it, for, though he loved
+bacon, he welcomed the many signs of a dinner of boundless
+variety.
+
+As he and his master returned to the long hall great plates of
+polished wood were being laid on the table. They gave Rodriguez a
+place on the right of the great chair that had the crown of the
+forest carved on the back.
+
+"Whose chair is that?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"The King of Shadow Valley," they said.
+
+"He is not here then," said Rodriguez.
+
+"Who knows?" said a bowman.
+
+"It is his chair," said another; "his place is ready. None knows
+the ways of the King of Shadow Valley."
+
+"He comes sometimes at this hour," said a third, "as the boar
+comes to Heather Pool at sunset. But not always. None knows his
+ways."
+
+"If they caught the King," said another, "the forest would perish.
+None loves it as he, none knows its ways as he, no other could so
+defend it."
+
+"Alas," said Miguel, "some day when he be not here they will enter
+the forest." All knew whom he meant by they. "And the goodly trees
+will go." He spoke as a man foretelling the end of the world; and,
+as men to whom no less was announced, the others listened to him.
+They all loved Shadow Valley.
+
+In this man's time, so they told Rodriguez, none entered the
+forest to hurt it, no tree was cut except by his command, and
+venturous men claiming rights from others than him seldom laid axe
+long to tree before he stood near, stepping noiselessly from among
+shadows of trees as though he were one of their spirits coming for
+vengeance on man.
+
+All this they told Rodriguez, but nothing definite they told of
+their king, where he was yesterday, where he might be now; and any
+questions he asked of such things seemed to offend a law of the
+forest.
+
+And then the dishes were carried in, to Morano's great delight:
+with wide blue eyes he watched the produce of that mighty estate
+coming in through the doorway cooked. Boars' heads, woodcock,
+herons, plates full of fishes, all manner of small eggs, a roe-
+deer and some rabbits, were carried in by procession. And the men
+set to with their ivory-handled knives, each handle being the
+whole tusk of a boar. And with their eating came merriment and
+tales of past huntings and talk of the forest and stories of the
+King of Shadow Valley.
+
+And always they spoke of him not only with respect but also with
+the discretion, Rodriguez thought, of men that spoke of one who
+might be behind them at that moment, and one who tolerated no
+trifling with his authority. Then they sang songs again, such as
+Rodriguez had heard on the road, and their merry lives passed
+clearly before his mind again, for we live in our songs as no men
+live in histories. And again Rodriguez lamented his hard ambition
+and his long, vague journey, turning away twice from happiness;
+once in the village of Lowlight where happiness deserted him, and
+here in the goodly forest where he jilted happiness. How well
+could he and Morano live as two of this band, he thought; leaving
+all cares in cities: for there dwelt cares in cities even then.
+Then he put the thought away. And as the evening wore away with
+merry talk and with song, Rodriguez turned to Miguel and told him
+how it was with la Garda and broached the matter of horses. And
+while the others sang Miguel spoke sadly to him. "Master," he
+said, "la Garda shall never take you in Shadow Valley, yet if you
+must leave us to make your fortune in the wars, though your
+fortune waits you here, there be many horses in the forest, and
+you and your servant shall have the best."
+
+"Tomorrow morning, senor?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"Even so," said Miguel.
+
+"And how shall I send them to you again?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"Master, they are yours," said Miguel.
+
+But this Rodriguez would not have, for as yet he only guessed what
+claim at all he had upon Shadow Valley, his speculations being far
+more concerned with the identity of the hidalgo that he had fought
+the night before, how he concerned Serafina, who had owned the
+rose that he carried: in fact his mind was busy with such studies
+as were proper to his age. And at last they decided between them
+on the house of a lowland smith, who was the furthest man that the
+bowmen knew who was secretly true to their king. At his house
+Rodriguez and Morano should leave the horses. He dwelt sixty miles
+from the northern edge of the forest, and would surely give
+Rodriguez fresh horses if he possessed them, for he was a true man
+to the bowman. His name was Gonzalez and he dwelt in a queer green
+house.
+
+They turned then to listen a moment to a hunting song that all the
+bowmen were singing about the death of a boar. Its sheer merriment
+constrained them. Then Miguel spoke again. "You should not leave
+the forest," he said sadly.
+
+Rodriguez sighed: it was decided. Then Miguel told him of his
+road, which ran north-eastward and would one day bring him out of
+Spain. He told him how towns on the way, and the river Ebro, and
+with awe and reverence he spoke of the mighty Pyrenees. And then
+Rodriguez rose, for the start was to be at dawn, and walked
+quietly through the singing out of the hall to the room where the
+great bed was. And soon he slept, and his dreams joined in the
+endless hunt through Shadow Valley that was carved all round the
+timbers of his bed.
+
+All too soon he heard voices, voices far off at first, to which he
+drew nearer and nearer; thus he woke grudgingly out of the deeps
+of sleep. It was Miguel and Morano calling him.
+
+When at length he reached the hall all the merriment of the
+evening was gone from it but the sober beauty of the forest
+flooded in through both windows with early sunlight and bird-song;
+so that it had not the sad appearance of places in which we have
+rejoiced, when we revisit them next day or next generation and
+find them all deserted by dance and song.
+
+Rodriguez ate his breakfast while the bowmen waited with their
+bows all strung by the door. When he was ready they all set off in
+the early light through the forest.
+
+Rodriguez did not criticise his ambition; it sailed too high above
+his logic for that; but he regretted it, as he went through the
+beauty of the forest among these happy men. But we must all have
+an ambition, and Rodriguez stuck to the one he had. He had
+another, but it was an ambition with weak wings that could not
+come to hope. It depended upon the first. If he could win a castle
+in the wars he felt that he might even yet hope towards Lowlight.
+
+Little was said, and Rodriguez was all alone with his thoughts. In
+two hours they met a bowman holding two horses. They had gone
+eight miles.
+
+"Farewell to the forest," said Miguel to Rodriguez. There was
+almost a query in his voice. Would Rodriguez really leave them? it
+seemed to say.
+
+"Farewell," he answered.
+
+Morano too had looked sideways towards his master, seeming almost
+to wonder what his answer would be: when it came he accepted it
+and walked to the horses. Rodriguez mounted: willing hands helped
+up Morano. "Farewell," said Miguel once more. And all the bowmen
+shouted "Farewell."
+
+"Make my farewell," said Rodriguez, "to the King of Shadow
+Valley."
+
+A twig cracked in the forest.
+
+"Hark," said Miguel. "Maybe that was a boar."
+
+"I cannot wait to hunt," said Rodriguez, "for I have far to go."
+
+"Maybe," said Miguel, "it was the King's farewell to you."
+
+Rodriguez looked into the forest and saw nothing.
+
+"Farewell," he said again. The horses were fresh and he let his
+go. Morano lumbered behind him. In two miles they came to the edge
+of the forest and up a rocky hill, and so to the plains again, and
+one more adventure lay behind them. Rodriguez turned round once on
+the high ground and took a long look back on the green undulations
+of peace. The forest slept there as though empty of men.
+
+Then they rode. In the first hour, easily cantering, they did ten
+miles. Then they settled down to what those of our age and country
+and occupation know as a hound-jog, which is seven miles an hour.
+And after two hours they let the horses rest. It was the hour of
+the frying-pan. Morano, having dismounted, stretched himself
+dolefully; then he brought out all manner of meats. Rodriguez
+looked wonderingly at them.
+
+"For the wars, master," said Morano. To whatever wars they went,
+the green bowmen seemed to have supplied an ample commissariat.
+
+They ate. And Rodriguez thought of the wars, for the thought of
+Serafina made him sad, and his rejection of the life of the forest
+saddened him too; so he sought to draw from the future the comfort
+that he could not get from the past.
+
+They mounted again and rode again for three hours, till they saw
+very far off on a hill a village that Miguel had told them was
+fifty miles from the forest.
+
+"We rest the night there," said Rodriguez pointing, though it was
+yet seven or eight miles away.
+
+"All the Saints be praised," said Morano.
+
+They dismounted then and went on foot, for the horses were weary.
+At evening they rode slowly into the village. At an inn whose
+hospitable looks were as cheerfully unlike the Inn of the Dragon
+and Knight as possible, they demanded lodging for all four. They
+went first to the stable, and when the horses had been handed over
+to the care of a groom they returned to the inn, and mine host and
+Rodriguez had to help Morano up the three steps to the door, for
+he had walked nine miles that day and ridden fifty and he was too
+weary to climb the steps.
+
+And later Rodriguez sat down alone to his supper at a table well
+and variously laden, for the doors of mine hosts' larder were
+opened wide in his honour; but Rodriguez ate sparingly, as do
+weary men.
+
+And soon he sought his bed. And on the old echoing stairs as he
+and mine host ascended they met Morano leaning against the wall.
+What shall I say of Morano? Reader, your sympathy is all ready to
+go out to the poor, weary man. He does not entirely deserve it,
+and shall not cheat you of it. Reader, Morano was drunk. I tell
+you this sorry truth rather than that the knave should have
+falsely come by your pity. And yet he is dead now over three
+hundred years, having had his good time to the full. Does he
+deserve your pity on that account? Or your envy? And to whom or
+what would you give it? Well, anyhow, he deserved no pity for
+being drunk. And yet he was thirsty, and too tired to eat, and
+sore in need of refreshment, and had had no more cause to learn to
+shun good wine than he had had to shun the smiles of princesses;
+and there the good wine had been, sparkling beside him merrily.
+
+And now, why now, fatigued as he had been an hour or so ago (but
+time had lost its tiresome, restless meaning), now he stood firm
+while all things and all men staggered.
+
+"Morano," said Rodriguez as he passed that foolish figure, "we go
+sixty miles to-morrow."
+
+"Sixty, master?" said Morano. "A hundred: two hundred."
+
+"It is best to rest now," said his master.
+
+"Two hundred, master, two hundred," Morano replied.
+
+And then Rodriguez left him, and heard him muttering his challenge
+to distance still, "Two hundred, two hundred," till the old
+stairway echoed with it.
+
+And so he came to his chamber, of which he remembered little, for
+sleep lurked there and he was soon with dreams, faring further
+with them than my pen can follow.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EIGHTH CHRONICLE
+
+HOW HE TRAVELLED FAR
+
+
+One blackbird on a twig near Rodriguez' window sang, then there
+were fifty singing, and morning arose over Spain all golden and
+wonderful.
+
+Rodriguez descended and found mine host rubbing his hands by his
+good table, with a look on his face that seemed to welcome the day
+and to find good auguries concerning it. But Morano looked as one
+that, having fallen from some far better place, is ill-content
+with earth and the mundane way.
+
+He had scorned breakfast; but Rodriguez breakfasted. And soon the
+two were bidding mine host farewell. They found their horses
+saddled, they mounted at once, and rode off slowly in the early
+day. The horses were tired and, slowly trotting and walking, and
+sometimes dismounting and dragging the horses on, it was nearly
+two hours before they had done ten miles and come to the house of
+the smith in a rocky village: the street was cobbled and the
+houses were all of stone.
+
+The early sparkle had gone from the dew, but it was still morning,
+and many a man but now sat down to his breakfast, as they arrived
+and beat on the door.
+
+Gonzalez the smith opened it, a round and ruddy man past fifty, a
+citizen following a reputable trade, but once, ah once, a bowman.
+
+"Senor," said Rodriguez, "our horses are weary. We have been told
+you will change them for us."
+
+"Who told you that?" said Gonzalez.
+
+"The green bowmen in Shadow Valley," the young man answered.
+
+As a meteor at night lights up with its greenish glare flowers and
+blades of grass, twisting long shadows behind them, lights up
+lawns and bushes and the deep places of woods, scattering quiet
+night for a moment, so the unexpected answer of Rodriguez lit
+memories in the mind of the smith all down the long years; and a
+twinkle and a sparkle of those memories dancing in woods long
+forsaken flashed from his eyes.
+
+"The green bowmen, senor," said Gonzalez. "Ah, Shadow Valley!"
+
+"We left it yesterday," said Rodriguez.
+
+When Gonzalez heard this he poured forth questions. "The forest,
+senor; how is it now with the forest? Do the boars still drink at
+Heather Pool? Do the geese go still to Greatmarsh? They should
+have come early this year. How is it with Larios, Raphael, Migada?
+Who shoots woodcock now?"
+
+The questions flowed on past answering, past remembering: he had
+not spoken of the forest for years. And Rodriguez answered as such
+questions are always answered, saying that all was well, and
+giving Gonzalez some little detail of some trifling affair of the
+forest, which he treasured as small shells are treasured in inland
+places when travellers bring them from the sea; but all that he
+heard of the forest seemed to the smith like something gathered on
+a far shore of time. Yes, he had been a bowman once.
+
+But he had no horses. One horse that drew a cart, but no horses
+for riding at all. And Rodriguez thought of the immense miles
+lying between him and the foreign land, keeping him back from his
+ambition; they all pressed on his mind at once. The smith was
+sorry, but he could not make horses.
+
+"Show him your coin, master," said Morano.
+
+"Ah, a small token," said Rodriguez, drawing it forth still on its
+green ribbon under his clothing. "The bowman's badge, is it not?"
+
+Gonzalez looked at it, then looked at Rodriguez.
+
+"Master," he said, "you shall have your horses. Give me time: you
+shall have them. Enter, master." And he bowed and widely opened
+the door. "If you will breakfast in my house while I go to the
+neighbours you shall have some horses, master."
+
+So they entered the house, and the smith with many bows gave the
+travellers over to the care of his wife, who saw from her
+husband's manner that these were persons of importance and as such
+she treated them both, and as such entertained them to their
+second breakfast. And this meant they ate heartily, as travellers
+can, who can go without a breakfast or eat two; and those who
+dwell in cities can do neither.
+
+And while the plump dame did them honour they spoke no word of the
+forest, for they knew not what place her husband's early years had
+in her imagination.
+
+They had barely finished their meal when the sound of hooves on
+cobbles was heard and Gonzalez beat on the door. They all went to
+the door and found him there with two horses. The horses were
+saddled and bridled. They fixed the stirrups to please them, then
+the travellers mounted at once. Rodriguez made his grateful
+farewell to the wife of the smith: then, turning to Gonzalez, he
+pointed to the two tired horses which had waited all the while
+with their reins thrown over a hook on the wall.
+
+"Let the owner of these have them till his own come back," he
+said, and added: "How far may I take these?"
+
+"They are good horses," said the smith.
+
+"Yes," said Rodriguez.
+
+"They could do fifty miles to-day," Gonzalez continued, "and to-
+morrow, why, forty, or a little more."
+
+"And where will that bring me?" said Rodriguez, pointing to the
+straight road which was going his way, north-eastward.
+
+"That," said Gonzalez, "that should bring you some ten or twenty
+miles short of Saspe."
+
+"And where shall I leave the horses?" Rodriguez asked.
+
+"Master," Gonzalez said, "in any village where there be a smith,
+if you say 'these are the horses of the smith Gonzalez, who will
+come for them one day from here,' they will take them in for you,
+master."
+
+"But," and Gonzalez walked a little away from his wife, and the
+horses walked and he went beside them, "north of here none knows
+the bowmen. You will get no fresh horses, master. What will you
+do?"
+
+"Walk," said Rodriguez.
+
+Then they said farewell, and there was a look on the face of the
+smith almost such as the sons of men might have worn in Genesis
+when angels visited them briefly.
+
+They settled down into a steady trot and trotted thus for three
+hours. Noon came, and still there was no rest for Morano, but only
+dust and the monotonous sight of the road, on which his eyes were
+fixed: nearly an hour more passed, and at last he saw his master
+halt and turn round in his saddle.
+
+"Dinner," Rodriguez said.
+
+All Morano's weariness vanished: it was the hour of the frying-pan
+once more.
+
+They had done more than twenty-one miles from the house of
+Gonzalez. Nimbly enough, in his joy at feeling the ground again,
+Morano ran and gathered sticks from the bushes. And soon he had a
+fire, and a thin column of grey smoke going up from it that to him
+was always home.
+
+When the frying-pan warmed and lard sizzled, when the smell of
+bacon mingled with the smoke, then Morano was where all wise men
+and all unwise try to be, and where some of one or the other some
+times come for awhile, by unthought paths and are gone again; for
+that smoky, mixed odour was happiness.
+
+Not for long men and horses rested, for soon Rodriguez' ambition
+was drawing him down the road again, of which he knew that there
+remained to be travelled over two hundred miles in Spain, and how
+much beyond that he knew not, nor greatly cared, for beyond the
+frontier of Spain he believed there lay the dim, desired country
+of romance where roads were long no more and no rain fell. They
+mounted again and pushed on for this country. Not a village they
+saw but that Morano hoped that here his affliction would end and
+that he would dismount and rest; and always Rodriguez rode on and
+Morano followed, and with a barking of dogs they were gone and the
+village rested behind them. For many an hour their slow trot
+carried them on; and Morano, clutching the saddle with worn arms,
+already was close to despair, when Rodriguez halted in a little
+village at evening before an inn. They had done their fifty miles
+from the house of Gonzalez, and even a little more.
+
+Morano rolled from his horse and beat on the small green door.
+Mine host came out and eyed them, preening the point of his beard;
+and Rodriguez sat his horse and looked at him. They had not the
+welcome here that Gonzalez gave them; but there was a room to
+spare for Rodriguez, and Morano was promised what he asked for,
+straw; and there was shelter to be had for the horses. It was all
+the travellers needed.
+
+Children peered at the strangers, gossips peeped out of doors to
+gather material concerning them, dogs noted their coming, the eyes
+of the little village watched them curiously, but Rodriguez and
+Morano passed into the house unheeding; and past those two tired
+men the mellow evening glided by like a dream. Tired though
+Rodriguez was he noticed a certain politeness in mine host while
+he waited at supper, which had not been noticeable when he had
+first received him, and rightly put this down to some talk of
+Morano's; but he did not guess that Morano had opened wide blue
+eyes and, babbling to his host, had guilelessly told him that his
+master a week ago had killed an uncivil inn-keeper.
+
+Scarcely were late birds home before Rodriguez sought his bed, and
+not all of them were sleeping before he slept.
+
+Another morning shone, and appeared to Spain, and all at once
+Rodriguez was wide awake. It was the eighth day of his wanderings.
+
+When he had breakfasted and paid his due in silver he and Morano
+departed, leaving mine host upon his doorstep bowing with an
+almost perplexed look on his shrewd face as he took the points of
+moustachios and beard lightly in turn between finger and thumb:
+for we of our day enter vague details about ourselves in the book
+downstairs when we stay at inns, but it was mine host's custom to
+gather all that with his sharp eyes. Whatever he gathered,
+Rodriguez and Morano were gone.
+
+But soon their pace dwindled, the trot slackening and falling to a
+walk; soon Rodriguez learned what it is to travel with tired
+horses. To Morano riding was merely riding, and the discomforts of
+that were so great that he noticed no difference. But to
+Rodriguez, his continual hitting and kicking his horse's sides,
+his dislike of doing it, the uselessness of it when done, his
+ambition before and the tired beast underneath, the body always
+some yards behind the beckoning spirit, were as great vexation as
+a traveller knows. It came to dismounting and walking miles on
+foot; even then the horses hung back. They halted an hour over
+dinner while the horses grazed and rested, and they returned to
+their road refreshed by the magic that was in the frying-pan, but
+the horses were no fresher.
+
+When our bodies are slothful and lie heavy, never responding to
+the spirit's bright promptings, then we know dullness: and the
+burden of it is the graver for hearing our spirits call faintly,
+as the chains of a buccaneer in some deep prison, who hears a
+snatch of his comrades' singing as they ride free by the coast,
+would grow more unbearable than ever before. But the weight of his
+tired horse seemed to hang heavier on the fanciful hopes that
+Rodriguez' dreams had made. Farther than ever seemed the Pyrenees,
+huger than ever their barrier, dimmer and dimmer grew the lands of
+romance.
+
+If the hopes of Rodriguez were low, if his fancies were faint,
+what material have I left with which to make a story with glitter
+enough to hold my readers' eyes to the page: for know that mere
+dreams and idle fancies, and all amorous, lyrical, unsubstantial
+things, are all that we writers have of which to make a tale, as
+they are all that the Dim Ones have to make the story of man.
+
+Sometimes riding, sometimes going on foot, with the thought of the
+long, long miles always crowding upon Rodriguez, overwhelming his
+hopes; till even the castle he was to win in the wars grew too
+pale for his fancy to see, tired and without illusions, they came
+at last by starlight to the glow of a smith's forge. He must have
+done forty-five miles and he knew they were near Caspe.
+
+The smith was working late, and looked up when Rodriguez halted.
+Yes, he knew Gonzalez, a master in the trade: there was a welcome
+for his horses.
+
+But for the two human travellers there were excuses, even
+apologies, but no spare beds. It was the same in the next three or
+four houses that stood together by the road. And the fever of
+Rodriguez' ambition drove him on, though Morano would have lain
+down and slept where they stood, though he himself was weary. The
+smith had received his horses; after that he cared not whether
+they gave him shelter or not, the alternative being the road, and
+that bringing nearer his wars and the castle he was to win. And
+that fancy that led his master Morano allowed always to lead him
+too, though a few more miles and he would have fallen asleep as he
+walked and dropped by the roadside and slept on. Luckily they had
+gone barely two miles from the forge where the horses rested, when
+they saw a high, dark house by the road and knocked on the door
+and found shelter. It was an old woman who let them in, a farmer's
+wife, and she had room for them and one mattress, but no bed. They
+were too tired to eat and did not ask for food, but at once
+followed her up the booming stairs of her house, which were all
+dark but for her candle, and so came among huge minuetting shadows
+to the long loft at the top. There was a mattress there which the
+old woman laid out for Rodriguez, and a heap of hay for Morano.
+Just for a moment, as Rodriguez climbed the last step of the stair
+and entered the loft where the huge shadows twirled between the
+one candle's light and the unbeaten darkness in corners, just for
+a moment romance seemed to beckon to him; for a moment, in spite
+of his fatigue and dejection, in spite of the possibility of his
+quest being crazy, for a moment he felt that great shadows and
+echoing boards, the very cobwebs even that hung from the black
+rafters, were all romantic things; he felt that his was a glorious
+adventure and that all these things that filled the loft in the
+night were such as should fitly attend on youth and glory. In a
+moment that feeling was gone he knew not why it had come. And
+though he remembered it till grey old age, when he came to know
+the causes of many things, he never knew what romance might have
+to do with shadows or echoes at night in an empty room, and only
+knew of such fancies that they came from beyond his understanding,
+whether from wisdom or folly.
+
+Morano was first asleep, as enormous snores testified, almost
+before the echoes had died away of the footsteps of the old woman
+descending the stairs; but soon Rodriguez followed him into the
+region of dreams, where fantastic ambitions can live with less of
+a struggle than in the broad light of day: he dreamed he walked at
+night down a street of castles strangely colossal in an awful
+starlight, with doors too vast for any human need, whose
+battlements were far in the heights of night; and chose, it being
+in time of war, the one that should be his; but the gargoyles on
+it were angry and spoiled the dream.
+
+Dream followed dream with furious rapidity, as the dreams of tired
+men do, racing each other, jostling and mingling and dancing, an
+ill-assorted company: myriads went by, a wild, grey, cloudy
+multitude; and with the last walked dawn.
+
+Rodriguez rose more relieved to quit so tumultuous a rest than
+refreshed by having had it.
+
+He descended, leaving Morano to sleep on, and not till the old
+dame had made a breakfast ready did he return to interrupt his
+snores.
+
+Even as he awoke upon his heap of hay Morano remained as true to
+his master's fantastic quest as the camel is true to the
+pilgrimage to Mecca. He awoke grumbling, as the camel grumbles at
+dawn when the packs are put on him where he lies, but never did he
+doubt that they went to victorious wars where his master would win
+a castle splendid with towers.
+
+Breakfast cheered both the travellers. And then the old lady told
+Rodriguez that Caspe was but a three hours' walk, and that cheered
+them even more, for Caspe is on the Ebro, which seemed to mark for
+Rodriguez a stage in his journey, being carried easily in his
+imagination, like the Pyrenees. What road he would take when he
+reached Caspe he had not planned. And soon Rodriguez expressed his
+gratitude, full of fervour, with many a flowery phrase which lived
+long in the old dame's mind; and the visit of those two travellers
+became one of the strange events of that house and was chief of
+the memories that faintly haunted the rafters of the loft for
+years.
+
+They did not reach Caspe in three hours, but went lazily, being
+weary; for however long a man defies fatigue the hour comes when
+it claims him. The knowledge that Caspe lay near with sure lodging
+for the night, soothed Rodriguez' impatience. And as they loitered
+they talked, and they decided that la Garda must now be too far
+behind to pursue any longer. They came in four hours to the bank
+of the Ebro and there saw Caspe near them; but they dined once
+more on the grass, sitting beside the river, rather than enter the
+town at once, for there had grown in both travellers a liking for
+the wanderers' green table of earth.
+
+It was a time to make plans. The country of romance was far away
+and they were without horses.
+
+"Will you buy horses, master?" said Morano.
+
+"We might not get them over the Pyrenees," said Rodriguez, though
+he had a better reason, which was that three gold pieces did not
+buy two saddled horses. There were no more friends to hire from.
+Morano grew thoughtful. He sat with his feet dangling over the
+bank of the Ebro.
+
+"Master," he said after a while, "this river goes our way. Let us
+come by boat, master, and drift down to France at our ease."
+
+To get a river over a range of mountains is harder than to get
+horses. Some such difficulty Rodriguez implied to him; but Morano,
+having come slowly by an idea, parted not so easily with it.
+
+"It goes our way, master," he repeated, and pointed a finger at
+the Ebro.
+
+At this moment a certain song that boatmen sing on that river,
+when the current is with them and they have nothing to do but be
+idle and their lazy thoughts run to lascivious things, came to the
+ears of Rodriguez and Morano; and a man with a bright blue sash
+steered down the Ebro. He had been fishing and was returning home.
+
+"Master," Morano said, "that knave shall row us there."
+
+Rodriguez seeing that the idea was fixed in Morano's mind
+determined that events would move it sooner than argument, and so
+made no reply.
+
+"Shall I tell him, master?" asked Morano.
+
+"Yes," said Rodriguez, "if he can row us over the Pyrenees."
+
+This was the permission that Morano sought, and a hideous yell
+broke from his throat hailing the boatman. The boatman looked up
+lazily, a young man with strong brown arms, turning black
+moustaches towards Morano. Again Morano hailed him and ran along
+the bank, while the boat drifted down and the boatman steered in
+towards Morano. Somehow Morano persuaded him to come in to see
+what he wanted; and in a creek he ran his boat aground, and there
+he and Morano argued and bargained. But Rodriguez remained where
+he was, wondering why it took so long to turn his servant's mind
+from that curious fancy. At last Morano returned.
+
+"Well?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"Master," said Morano, "he will row us to the Pyrenees."
+
+"The Pyrenees!" said Rodriguez. "The Ebro runs into the sea." For
+they had taught him this at the college of San Josephus.
+
+"He will row us there," said Morano, "for a gold piece a day,
+rowing five hours each day."
+
+Now between them they had but four gold pieces; but that did not
+make the Ebro run northward. It seemed that the Ebro, after going
+their way, as Morano had said, for twenty or thirty miles, was
+joined by the river Segre, and that where the Ebro left them,
+turning eastwards, the course of the Segre took them on their way:
+but it would be rowing against the current.
+
+"How far is it?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"A hundred miles, he says," answered Morano. "He knows it well."
+
+Rodriguez calculated swiftly. First he added thirty miles; for he
+knew that his countrymen took a cheerful view of distance, seldom
+allowing any distance to oppress them under its true name at the
+out set of a journey; then he guessed that the boatman might row
+five miles an hour for the first thirty miles with the stream of
+the Ebro, and he hoped that he might row three against the Segre
+until they came near the mountains, where the current might grow
+too strong.
+
+"Morano," he said, "we shall have to row too."
+
+"Row, master?" said Morano.
+
+"We can pay him for four days," said Rodriguez. "If we all row we
+may go far on our way."
+
+"It is better than riding," replied Morano with entire
+resignation.
+
+And so they walked to the creek and Rodriguez greeted the boatman,
+whose name was Perez; and they entered the boat and he rowed them
+down to Caspe. And, in the house of Perez, Rodriguez slept that
+night in a large dim room, untidy with diverse wares: they slept
+on heaps of things that pertained to the river and fishing. Yet it
+was late before Rodriguez slept, for in sight of his mind came
+glimpses at last of the end of his journey; and, when he slept at
+last, he saw the Pyrenees. Through the long night their mighty
+heads rejected him, staring immeasurably beyond him in silence,
+and then in happier dreams they beckoned him for a moment. Till at
+last a bird that had entered the city of Caspe sang clear and it
+was dawn. With that first light Rodriguez arose and awoke Morano.
+Together they left that long haven of lumber and found Perez
+already stirring. They ate hastily and all went down to the boat,
+the unknown that waits at the end of all strange journeys
+quickening their steps as they went through the early light.
+
+Perez rowed first and the others took their turns and so they went
+all the morning down the broad flood of the Ebro, and came in the
+afternoon to its meeting place with the Segre. And there they
+landed and stretched their limbs on shore and lit a fire and
+feasted, before they faced the current that would be henceforth
+against them. Then they rowed on.
+
+When they landed by starlight and unrolled a sheet of canvas that
+Perez had put in the boat, and found what a bad time starlight is
+for pitching a tent, Rodriguez and Morano had rowed for four hours
+each and Perez had rowed for five. They carried no timber in the
+boat but used the oars for tent-poles and cut tent-pegs with a
+small hatchet that Perez had brought.
+
+They stumbled on rocks, tore the canvas on bushes, lost the same
+thing over and over again; in fact they were learning the craft of
+wandering. Yet at last their tent was up and a good fire
+comforting them outside, and Morano had cooked the food and they
+had supped and talked, and after that they slept. And over them
+sleeping the starlight faded away, and in the greyness that none
+of them dreamed was dawn five clear notes were heard so shrill in
+the night that Rodriguez half waking wondered what bird of the
+darkness called, and learned from the answering chorus that it was
+day.
+
+He woke Morano who rose in that chilly hour and, striking sparks
+among last night's embers, soon had a fire: they hastily made a
+meal and wrapped up their tent and soon they were going onward
+against the tide of the Segre. And that day Morano rowed more
+skilfully; and Rodriguez unwrapped his mandolin and played,
+reclining in the boat while he rested from rowing. And the
+mandolin told them all, what the words of none could say, that
+they fared to adventure in the land of Romance, to the overthrow
+of dullness and the sameness of all drear schemes and the conquest
+of discontent in the spirit of man; and perhaps it sang of a time
+that has not yet come, or the mandolin lied.
+
+That evening three wiser men made their camp before starlight.
+They were now far up the Segre.
+
+For thirteen hours next day they toiled at the oars or lay
+languid. And while Rodriguez rested he played on his mandolin. The
+Segre slipped by them.
+
+They seemed like no men on their way to war, but seemed to loiter
+as the bright river loitered, which slid seaward in careless ease
+and was wholly freed from time.
+
+On this day they heard men speak of the Pyrenees, two men and a
+woman walking by the river; their voices came to the boat across
+the water, and they spoke of the Pyrenees. And on the next day
+they heard men speak of war. War that some farmers had fled from
+on the other side of the mountain. When Rodriguez heard these
+chance words his dreams came nearer till they almost touched the
+edges of reality.
+
+It was the last day of Perez' rowing. He rowed well although they
+neared the cradle of the Segre and he struggled against them in
+his youth. Grey peaks began to peer that had nursed that river.
+Grey faces of stone began to look over green hills. They were the
+Pyrenees.
+
+When Rodriguez saw at last the Pyrenees he drew a breath and was
+unable to speak. Soon they were gone again below the hills: they
+had but peered for a moment to see who troubled the Segre.
+
+And the sun set and still they did not camp, but Perez rowed on
+into the starlight. That day he rowed six hours.
+
+They pitched their tent as well as they could in the darkness;
+and, breathing a clear new air all crisp from the Pyrenees, they
+slept outside the threshold of adventure.
+
+Rodriguez awoke cold. Once more he heard the first blackbird who
+sings clear at the edge of night all alone in the greyness, the
+nightingale's only rival; a rival like some unknown in the midst
+of a crowd who for a moment leads some well-loved song, in notes
+more liquid than a master-singer's; and all the crowd joins in and
+his voice is lost, and no one learns his name. At once a host of
+birds answered him out of dim bushes, whose shapes had barely as
+yet emerged from night. And in this chorus Perez awoke, and even
+Morano.
+
+They all three breakfasted together, and then the wanderers said
+good-bye to Perez. And soon he was gone with his bright blue sash,
+drifting homewards with the Segre, well paid yet singing a little
+sadly as he drifted; for he had been one of a quest, and now he
+left it at the edge of adventure, near solemn mountains and,
+beyond them, romantic, near-unknown lands. So Perez left and
+Rodriguez and Morano turned again to the road, all the more
+lightly because they had not done a full day's march for so long,
+and now a great one unrolled its leagues before them.
+
+The heads of the mountains showed themselves again. They tramped
+as in the early days of their quest. And as they went the
+mountains, unveiling themselves slowly, dropping film after film
+of distance that hid their mighty forms, gradually revealed to
+the wanderers the magnificence of their beauty. Till at evening
+Rodriguez and Morano stood on a low hill, looking at that
+tremendous range, which lifted far above the fields of Earth, as
+though its mountains were no earthly things but sat with Fate and
+watched us and did not care.
+
+Rodriguez and Morano stood and gazed in silence. They had come
+twenty miles since morning, they were tired and hungry, but the
+mountains held them: they stood there looking neither for rest nor
+food. Beyond them, sheltering under the low hills, they saw a
+little village. Smoke straggled up from it high into the evening:
+beyond the village woods sloped away upwards. But far above smoke
+or woods the bare peaks brooded. Rodriguez gazed on their austere
+solemnity, wondering what secret they guarded there for so long,
+guessing what message they held and hid from man; until he learned
+that the mystery they guarded among them was of things that he
+knew not and could never know.
+
+Tinkle-ting said the bells of a church, invisible among the houses
+of that far village. Tinkle-ting said the crescent of hills that
+sheltered it. And after a while, speaking out of their grim and
+enormous silences with all the gravity of their hundred ages,
+Tinkle-ting said the mountains. With this trivial message Echo
+returned from among the homes of the mighty, where she had run
+with the small bell's tiny cry to trouble their crowned aloofness.
+
+Rodriguez and Morano pressed on, and the mountains cloaked
+themselves as they went, in air of many colours; till the stars
+came out and the lights of the village gleamed. In darkness, with
+surprise in the tones of the barking dogs, the two wanderers came
+to the village where so few ever came, for it lay at the end of
+Spain, cut off by those mighty rocks, and they knew not much of
+what lands lay beyond.
+
+They beat on a door below a hanging board, on which was written
+"The Inn of the World's End": a wandering scholar had written it
+and had been well paid for his work, for in those days writing was
+rare. The door was opened for them by the host of the inn, and
+they entered a room in which men who had supped were sitting at a
+table. They were all of them men from the Spanish side of the
+mountains, farmers come into the village on the affairs of Mother
+Earth; next day they would be back at their farms again; and of
+the land the other side of the mountains that was so near now they
+knew nothing, so that it still remained for the wanderers a thing
+of mystery wherein romance could dwell: and because they knew
+nothing of that land the men at the inn treasured all the more the
+rumours that sometimes came from it, and of these they talked, and
+mine host listened eagerly, to whom all tales were brought soon or
+late; and most he loved to hear tales from beyond the mountains.
+
+Rodriguez and Morano sat still and listened, and the talk was all
+of war. It was faint and vague like fable, but rumour clearly said
+War, and the other side of the mountains. It may be that no man
+has a crazy ambition without at moments suspecting it; but prove
+it by the touchstone of fact and he becomes at once as a woman
+whose invalid son, after years of seclusion indoors, wins
+unexpectedly some athletic prize. When Rodriguez heard all this
+talk of wars quite near he thought of his castle as already won;
+his thoughts went further even, floating through Lowlight in the
+glowing evening, and drifting up and down past Serafina's house
+below the balcony where she sat for ever.
+
+Some said the Duke would never attack the Prince because the
+Duke's aunt was a princess from the Troubadour's country. Another
+said that there would surely be war. Others said that there was
+war already, and too late for man to stop it. All said it would
+soon be over.
+
+And one man said that it was the last war that would come, because
+gunpowder made fighting impossible. It could smite a man down, he
+said, at two hundred paces, and a man be slain not knowing whom he
+fought. Some loved fighting and some loved peace, he said, but
+gunpowder suited none.
+
+"I like not the sound of that gunpowder, master," said Morano to
+Rodriguez.
+
+"Nobody likes it," said the man at the table. "It is the end of
+war." And some sighed and some were glad. But Rodriguez determined
+to push on before the last war was over.
+
+Next morning Rodriguez paid the last of his silver pieces and set
+off with Morano before any but mine host were astir. There was
+nothing but the mountains in front of them.
+
+They climbed all the morning and they came to the fir woods. There
+they lit a good fire and Morano brought out his frying-pan. Over
+the meal they took stock of their provisions and found that, for
+all the store Morano had brought from the forest, they had now
+only food for three days; and they were quite without money. Money
+in those uplifted wastes seemed trivial, but the dwindling food
+told Rodriguez that he must press on; for man came among those
+rocky monsters supplied with all his needs, or perished unnoticed
+before their stony faces. All the afternoon they passed through
+the fir woods, and as shadows began to grow long they passed the
+last tree. The village and all the fields about it and the road by
+which they had come were all spread out below them like little
+trivial things dimly remembered from very long ago by one whose
+memory weakens. Distance had dwarfed them, and the cold regard of
+those mighty peaks ignored them. And then a shadow fell on the
+village, then tiny lights shone out. It was night down there.
+Still the two wanderers climbed on in the daylight. With their
+faces to the rocks they scarce saw night climb up behind them. But
+when Rodriguez looked up at the sky to see how much light was
+left, and met the calm gaze of the evening star, he saw that Night
+and the peaks were met together, and understood all at once how
+puny an intruder is man.
+
+"Morano," said Rodriguez, "we must rest here for the night."
+
+Morano looked round him with an air of discontent, not with his
+master's words but with the rocks' angular hardness. There was
+scarce a plant of any kind near them now. They were near the snow,
+which had flushed like a wild rose at sunset but was now all grey.
+Grey cliffs seemed to be gazing sheer at eternity; and here was
+man, the creature of a moment, who had strayed in the cold all
+homeless among his betters. There was no welcome for them there:
+whatever feeling great mountains evoke, THAT feeling was clear in
+Rodriguez and Morano. They were all amongst those that have other
+aims, other ends, and know naught of man. A bitter chill from the
+snow and from starry space drove this thought home.
+
+They walked on looking for a better place, as men will, but found
+none. And at last they lay down on the cold earth under a rock
+that seemed to give shelter from the wind, and there sought sleep;
+but cold came instead, and sleep kept far from the tremendous
+presences of the peaks of the Pyrenees that gazed on things far
+from here.
+
+An ageing moon arose, and Rodriguez touched Morano and rose up;
+and the two went slowly on, tired though they were. Picture the
+two tiny figures, bent, shivering and weary, walking with clumsy
+sticks cut in the wood, amongst the scorn of those tremendous
+peaks, which the moon showed all too clearly.
+
+They got little warmth from walking, they were too weary to run;
+and after a while they halted and burned their sticks, and got a
+little warmth for some moments from their fire, which burned
+feebly and strangely in those inhuman solitudes.
+
+Then they went on again and their track grew steeper. They rested
+again for fatigue, and rose and climbed again because of the cold;
+and all the while the peaks stared over them to spaces far beyond
+the thought of man.
+
+Long before Spain knew anything of dawn a monster high in heaven
+smiled at the sun, a peak out-towering all its aged children. It
+greeted the sun as though this lonely thing, that scorned the race
+of man since ever it came, had met a mighty equal out in Space.
+The vast peak glowed, and the rest of its grey race took up the
+greeting leisurely one by one. Still it was night in all Spanish
+houses.
+
+Rodriguez and Morano were warmed by that cold peak's glow, though
+no warmth came from it at all; but the sight of it cheered them
+and their pulses rallied, and so they grew warmer in that bitter
+hour.
+
+And then dawn came, and showed them that they were near the top of
+the pass. They had come to the snow that gleams there
+everlastingly.
+
+There was no material for a fire but they ate cold meats, and went
+wearily on. They passed through that awful assemblage of peaks. By
+noon they were walking upon level ground.
+
+In the afternoon Rodriguez, tired with the journey and with the
+heat of the sun, decided that it was possible to sleep, and,
+wrapping his cloak around him, he lay down, doing what Morano
+would have done, by instinct. Morano was asleep at once and
+Rodriguez soon after. They awoke with the cold at sunset.
+
+Refreshed amazingly they ate some food and started their walk
+again to keep themselves warm for the night. They were still on
+level ground and set out with a good stride in their relief at
+being done with climbing. Later they slowed down and wandered just
+to keep warm. And some time in the starlight they felt their path
+dip, and knew that they were going downward now to the land of
+Rodriguez' dreams.
+
+When the peaks glowed again, first meeting day in her earliest
+dancing-grounds of filmy air, they stood now behind the wanderers.
+Below them still in darkness lay the land of their dream, but
+hitherto it had always faded at dawn. Now hills put up their heads
+one by one through films of mist; woods showed, then hedges, and
+afterwards fields, greyly at first and then, in the cold hard
+light of morning, becoming more and more real. The sight of the
+land so long sought, at moments believed by Morano not to exist on
+earth, perhaps to have faded away when fables died, swept their
+fatigue from the wanderers, and they stepped out helped by the
+slope of the Pyrenees and cheered by the rising sun. They came at
+last to things that welcome man, little shrubs flowering, and--at
+noon--to the edge of a fir wood. They entered the wood and lit a
+merry fire, and heard birds singing, at which they both rejoiced,
+for the great peaks had said nothing.
+
+They ate the food that Morano cooked, and drew warmth and cheer
+from the fire, and then they slept a little: and, rising from
+sleep, they pushed on through the wood, downward and downward
+toward the land of their dreams, to see if it was true.
+
+They passed the wood and came to curious paths, and little hills,
+and heath, and rocky places, and wandering vales that twisted all
+awry. They passed through them all with the slope of the mountain
+behind them. When level rays from the sunset mellowed the fields
+of France the wanderers were walking still, but the peaks were far
+behind them, austerely gazing on the remotest things, forgetting
+the footsteps of man. And walking on past soft fields in the
+evening, all tilted a little about the mountain's feet, they had
+scarcely welcomed the sight of the evening star, when they saw
+before them the mild glow of a window and knew they were come
+again to the earth that is mother to man. In their cold savagery
+the inhuman mountains decked themselves out like gods with colours
+they took from the sunset; then darkened, all those peaks, in
+brooding conclave and disappeared in the night. And the hushed
+night heard the tiny rap of Morano's hands on the door of the
+house that had the glowing window.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE NINTH CHRONICLE
+
+HOW HE WON A CASTLE IN SPAIN
+
+
+The woman that came to the door had on her face a look that
+pleased Morano.
+
+"Are you soldiers?" she said. And her scared look portended war.
+
+"My master is a traveller looking for the wars," said Morano. "Are
+the wars near?"
+
+"Oh, no, not near," said the woman; "not near."
+
+And something in the anxious way she said "not near" pleased
+Morano also.
+
+"We shall find those wars, master," he said.
+
+And then they both questioned her. It seemed the wars were but
+twenty miles away. "But they will move northward," she said.
+"Surely they will move farther off?"
+
+Before the next night was passed Rodriguez' dream might come true!
+
+And then the man came to the door anxious at hearing strange
+voices; and Morano questioned him too, but he understood never a
+word. He was a French farmer that had married a Spanish girl, out
+of the wonderful land beyond the mountains: but whether he
+understood her or not he never understood Spanish. But both
+Rodriguez and the farmer's wife knew the two languages, and he had
+no difficulty in asking for lodging for the night; and she looked
+wistfully at him going to the wars, for in those days wars were
+small and not every man went. The night went by with dreams that
+were all on the verge of waking, which passed like ghosts along
+the edge of night almost touched by the light of day. It was
+Rodriguez whom these dreams visited. The farmer and his wife
+wondered awhile and then slept; Morano slept with all his wonted
+lethargy; but Rodriguez with his long quest now on the eve of
+fulfilment slept a tumultuous sleep. Sometimes his dreams raced
+over the Pyrenees, running south as far as Lowlight; and sometimes
+they rushed forward and clung like bats to the towers of the great
+castle that he should win in the war. And always he lay so near
+the edge of sleep that he never distinguished quite between
+thought and dream.
+
+Dawn came and he put by all the dreams but the one that guided him
+always, and went and woke Morano. They ate hurriedly and left the
+house, and again the farmer's wife looked curiously at Rodriguez,
+as though there were something strange in a man that went to wars:
+for those days were not as these days. They followed the direction
+that had been given them, and never had the two men walked so
+fast. By the end of four hours they had done sixteen miles. They
+halted then, and Morano drew out his frying-pan with a haughty
+flourish, and cooked in the grand manner, every movement he made
+was a triumphant gesture; for they had passed refugees! War was
+now obviously close: they had but to take the way that the
+refugees were not taking. The dream was true: Morano saw himself
+walking slowly in splendid dress along the tapestried corridors of
+his master's castle. He would have slept after eating and would
+have dreamed more of this, but Rodriguez commanded him to put the
+things together: so what remained of the food disappeared again in
+a sack, the frying-pan was slung over his shoulders, and Morano
+stood ready again for the road.
+
+They passed more refugees: their haste was unmistakable, and told
+more than their lips could have told had they tarried to speak:
+the wars were near now, and the wanderers went leisurely.
+
+As they strolled through the twilight they came over the brow of a
+hill, a little fold of the earth disturbed eras ago by the awful
+rushing up of the Pyrenees; and they saw the evening darkening
+over the fields below them and a white mist rising only just clear
+of the grass, and two level rows of tents greyish-white like the
+mist, with a few more tents scattered near them. The tents had
+come up that evening with the mist, for there were men still
+hammering pegs. They were lighting fires now as evening settled
+in. Two hundred paces or so separated each row. It was two armies
+facing each other.
+
+The gloaming faded: mist and the tents grew greyer: camp-fires
+blinked out of the dimness and grew redder and redder, and candles
+began to be lit beside the tents till all were glowing pale
+golden: Rodriguez and Morano stood there wondering awhile as they
+looked on the beautiful aura that surrounds the horrors of war.
+
+They came by starlight to that tented field, by twinkling
+starlight to the place of Rodriguez' dream.
+
+"For which side will you fight, master?" said Morano in his ear.
+
+"For the right," said Rodriguez and strode on towards the nearest
+tents, never doubting that he would be guided, though not trying
+to comprehend how this could be.
+
+They met with an officer going among his tents. "Where do you go?"
+he shouted.
+
+"Senor," Rodriguez said, "I come with my mandolin to sing songs to
+you."
+
+And at this the officer called out and others came from their
+tents; and Rodriguez repeated his offer to them not without
+confidence, for he knew that he had a way with the mandolin. And
+they said that they fought a battle on the morrow and could not
+listen to song: they heaped scorn on singing for they said they
+must needs prepare for the fight: and all of them looked with
+scorn on the mandolin. So Rodriguez bowed low to them with doffed
+hat and left them; and Morano bowed also, seeing his master bow;
+and the men of that camp returned to their preparations. A short
+walk brought Rodriguez and his servant to the other camp, over a
+flat field convenient for battle. He went up to a large tent well
+lit, the door being open towards him; and, having explained his
+errand to a sentry that stood outside, he entered and saw three
+persons of quality that were sitting at a table. To them he bowed
+low in the tent door, saying: "Senors, I am come to sing songs to
+you, playing the while upon my mandolin."
+
+And they welcomed him gladly, saying: "We fight tomorrow and will
+gladly cheer our hearts with the sound of song and strengthen our
+men thereby."
+
+And so Rodriguez sang among the tents, standing by a great fire to
+which they led him; and men came from the tents and into the
+circle of light, and in the darkness outside it were more than
+Rodriguez saw. And he sang to the circle of men and the vague
+glimmer of faces. Songs of their homes he sang them, not in their
+language, but songs that were made by old poets about the homes of
+their infancy, in valleys under far mountains remote from the
+Pyrenees. And in the song the yearnings of dead poets lived again,
+all streaming homeward like swallows when the last of the storms
+is gone: and those yearnings echoed in the hearts that beat in the
+night around the campfire, and they saw their own homes. And then
+he began to touch his mandolin; and he played them the tunes that
+draw men from their homes and that march them away to war. The
+tunes flowed up from the firelight: the mandolin knew. And the men
+heard the mandolin saying what they would say.
+
+In the late night he ended, and a hush came down on the camp while
+the music floated away, going up from the dark ring of men and the
+fire-lit faces, touching perhaps the knees of the Pyrenees and
+drifting thence wherever echoes go. And the sparks of the camp-
+fire went straight upwards as they had done for hours, and the men
+that sat around it saw them go: for long they had not seen the
+sparks stream upwards, for their thoughts were far away with the
+mandolin. And all at once they cheered. And Rodriguez bowed to the
+one whose tent he had entered, and sought permission to fight for
+them in the morning.
+
+With good grace this was accorded him, and while he bowed and well
+expressed his thanks he felt Morano touching his elbow. And as
+soon as he had gone aside with Morano that fat man's words bubbled
+over and were said.
+
+"Master, fight not for these men," he exclaimed, "for they listen
+to song till midnight while the others prepare for battle. The
+others will win the fight, master, and where will your castle be?"
+
+"Morano," said Rodriguez, "there seems to be truth in that. Yet
+must we fight for the right. For how would it be if those that
+have denied song should win and thrive? The arm of every good man
+must be against them. They have denied song, Morano! We must fight
+against them, you and I, while we can lay sword to head."
+
+"Yes, indeed, master," said Morano. "But how shall you come by
+your castle?"
+
+"As for that," said Rodriguez, "it must some day be won, yet not
+by denying song. These have given a welcome to song, and the
+others have driven it forth. And what would life be if those that
+deny song are to be permitted to thrive unmolested by all good
+men?"
+
+"I know not, master," said Morano, "but I would have that castle."
+
+"Enough," said Rodriguez. "We must fight for the right."
+
+And so Rodriguez remained true to those that had heard him sing.
+And they gave him a casque and breast-plate, proof, they said,
+against any sword, and offered a sword that they said would surely
+cleave any breast-plate. For they fought not in battle with the
+nimble rapier. But Rodriguez did not forsake that famous exultant
+sword whose deeds he knew from many an ancient song; which he had
+brought so far to give it its old rich drink of blood. He believed
+it the bright key of the castle he was to win.
+
+And they gave Rodriguez a good bed on the ground in the tent of
+the three leaders, the tent to which he first came; for they
+honoured him for the gift of song that he had, and because he was
+a stranger, and because he had asked permission to fight for them
+in their battle. And Rodriguez took one look by the light of a
+lantern at the rose he had carried from Lowlight, then slept a
+sleep through whose dreams loomed up the towers of castles.
+
+Dawn came and he slept on still; but by seven all the camp was
+loudly astir, for they had promised the enemy to begin the battle
+at eight. Rodriguez breakfasted lightly; for, now that the day of
+his dreams was come at last and all his hopes depended on the day,
+an anxiety for many things oppressed him. It was as though his
+castle, rosy and fair in dreams, chilled with its huge cold rocks
+all the air near it: it was as though Rodriguez touched it at last
+with his hands and felt a dankness of which he had never dreamed.
+
+Then it came to the hour of eight and his anxieties passed.
+
+The army was now drawn up before its tents in line, but the enemy
+was not yet ready and so they had to wait.
+
+When the signal at length was given and the cannoniers fired their
+pieces, and the musketoons were shot off, many men fell. Now
+Rodriguez, with Morano, was placed on the right, and either
+through a slight difference in numbers or because of an unevenness
+in the array of battle they a little overlapped the enemy's left.
+When a few men fell wounded there by the discharge of the
+musketoons this overlapping was even more pronounced.
+
+Now the leaders of that fair army scorned all unknightly devices,
+and would never have descended to any vile ruse de querre. The
+reproach can therefore never be made against them that they ever
+intended to outflank their enemy. Yet, when both armies advanced
+after the discharge of the musketoons and the merry noise of the
+cannon, this occurred as the result of chance, which no leader can
+be held accountable for; so that those that speak of treachery in
+this battle, and deliberate outflanking, lie.
+
+Now Rodriguez as he advanced with his sword, when the musketoons
+were empty, had already chosen his adversary. For he had carefully
+watched those opposite to him, before any smoke should obscure
+them, and had selected the one who from the splendour of his dress
+might be expected to possess the finest castle. Certainly this
+adversary outshone those amongst whom he stood, and gave fair
+promise of owning goodly possessions, for he wore a fine green
+cloak over a dress of lilac, and his helm and cuirass had a look
+of crafty workmanship. Towards him Rodriguez marched.
+
+Then began fighting foot to foot, and there was a pretty laying on
+of swords. And had there been a poet there that day then the story
+of their fight had come down to you, my reader, all that way from
+the Pyrenees, down all those hundreds of years, and this tale of
+mine had been useless, the lame repetition in prose of songs that
+your nurses had sung to you. But they fought unseen by those that
+see for the Muses.
+
+Rodriguez advanced upon his chosen adversary and, having briefly
+bowed, they engaged at once. And Rodriguez belaboured his helm
+till dints appeared, and beat it with swift strokes yet till the
+dints were cracks, and beat the cracks till hair began to appear:
+and all the while his adversary's strokes grew weaker and wilder,
+until he tottered to earth and Rodriguez had won. Swift then as
+cats, while Morano kept off others, Rodriguez leaped to his
+throat, and, holding up the stiletto that he had long ago taken as
+his legacy from the host of the Dragon and Knight, he demanded the
+fallen man's castle as ransom for his life.
+
+"My castle, senor?" said his prisoner weakly.
+
+"Yes," said Rodriguez impatiently.
+
+"Yes, senor," said his adversary and closed his eyes for awhile.
+
+"Does he surrender his castle, master?" asked Morano.
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Rodriguez. They looked at each other: all at
+last was well.
+
+The battle was rolling away from them and was now well within the
+enemy's tents.
+
+History says of that day that the good men won. And, sitting, a
+Muse upon her mythical mountain, her decision must needs be one
+from which we may not appeal: and yet I wonder if she is ever
+bribed. Certainly the shrewd sense of Morano erred for once; for
+those for whom he had predicted victory, because they prepared so
+ostentatiously upon the field, were defeated; while the others,
+having made their preparations long before, were able to cheer
+themselves with song before the battle and to win it when it came.
+
+And so Rodriguez was left undisturbed in possession of his
+prisoner and with the promise of his castle as a ransom. The
+battle was swiftly over, as must needs be where little armies meet
+so close. The enemy's camp was occupied, his army routed, and
+within an hour of beginning the battle the last of the fighting
+ceased.
+
+The army returned to its tents to rejoice and to make a banquet,
+bringing with them captives and horses and other spoils of war.
+And Rodriguez had honour among them because he had fought on the
+right and so was one of those that had broken the enemy's left,
+from which direction victory had come. And they would have feasted
+him and done him honour, both for his work with the sword and for
+his songs to the mandolin; and they would have marched away soon
+to their own country and would have taken him with them and
+advanced him to honour there. But Rodriguez would not stay with
+them for he had his castle at last, and must needs march off at
+once with his captive and Morano to see the fulfilment of his
+dream. And therefore he thanked the leaders of that host with many
+a courtesy and many a well-bent bow, and explained to them how it
+was about his castle, and felicitated them on the victory of their
+good cause, and so wished them farewell. And they said farewell
+sorrowfully: but when they saw he would go, they gave him horses
+for himself and Morano, and another for his captive; and they
+heaped them with sacks of provender and blankets and all things
+that could give him comfort upon a journey: all this they brought
+him out of their spoils of war, and they would give him no less
+that the most that the horses could carry. And then Rodriguez
+turned to his captive again, who now stood on his feet.
+
+"Senor," he said, "pray tell us all of your castle wherewith you
+ransom your life."
+
+"Senor," he answered, "I have a castle in Spain."
+
+"Master," broke in Morano, his eyes lighting up with delight,
+"there are no castles like the Spanish ones."
+
+They got to horse then, all three; the captive on a horse of far
+poorer build than the other two and well-laden with sacks, for
+Rodriguez took no chance of his castle cantering, as it were, away
+from him on four hooves through the dust.
+
+And when they heard that his journey was by way of the Pyrenees
+four knights of that army swore they would ride with him as far as
+the frontier of Spain, to bear him company and bring him fuel in
+the lonely cold of the mountains. They all set off and the merry
+army cheered. He left them making ready for their banquet, and
+never knew the cause for which he had fought.
+
+They came by evening again to the house to which Rodriguez had
+come two nights before, when he had slept there with his castle
+yet to win. They all halted before it, and the man and the woman
+came to the door terrified. "The wars!" they said.
+
+"The wars," said one of the riders, "are over, and the just cause
+has won."
+
+"The Saints be praised!" said the woman. "But will there be no
+more fighting?"
+
+"Never again," said the horseman, "for men are sick of gunpowder."
+
+"The Saints be thanked," she said.
+
+"Say not that," said the horseman, "for Satan invented gunpowder."
+
+And she was silent; but, had none been there, she had secretly
+thanked Satan.
+
+They demanded the food and shelter that armed men have the right
+to demand.
+
+In the morning they were gone. They became a memory, which
+lingered like a vision, made partly of sunset and partly of the
+splendour of their cloaks, and so went down the years that those
+two folk had, a thing of romance, magnificence and fear. And now
+the slope of the mountain began to lift against them, and they
+rode slowly towards those unearthly peaks that had deserted the
+level fields before ever man came to them, and that sat there now
+familiar with stars and dawn with the air of never having known of
+man. And as they rode they talked. And Rodriguez talked with the
+four knights that rode with him, and they told tales of war and
+told of the ways of fighting of many men: and Morano rode behind
+them beside the captive and questioned him all the morning about
+his castle in Spain. And at first the captive answered his
+questions slowly, as if he were weary, or as though he were long
+from home and remembered its features dimly; but memory soon
+returned and he answered clearly, telling of such a castle as
+Morano had not dreamed; and the eyes of the fat man bulged as he
+rode beside him, growing rounder and rounder as they rode.
+
+They came by sunset to that wood of firs in which Rodriguez had
+rested. In the midst of the wood they halted and tethered their
+horses to trees; they tied blankets to branches and made an
+encampment; and in the midst of it they made a fire, at first,
+with pine-needles and the dead lower twigs and then with great
+logs. And there they feasted together, all seven, around the fire.
+And when the feast was over and the great logs burning well, and
+red sparks went up slowly towards the silver stars, Morano turned
+to the prisoner seated beside him and "Tell the senors," he said,
+"of my master's castle."
+
+And in the silence, that was rather lulled than broken by the
+whispering wind from the snow that sighed through the wood, the
+captive slowly lifted up his head and spoke in his queer accent.
+
+"Senors, in Aragon, across the Ebro, are many goodly towers." And
+as he spoke they all leaned forward to listen, dark faces bright
+with firelight. "On the Ebro's southern bank stands," he went on,
+"my home."
+
+He told of strange rocks rising from the Ebro; of buttresses built
+among them in unremembered times; of the great towers lifting up
+in multitudes from the buttresses; and of the mighty wall,
+windowless until it came to incredible heights, where the windows
+shone all safe from any ladder of war.
+
+At first they felt in his story his pride in his lost home, and
+wondered, when he told of the height of his towers, how much he
+added in pride. And then the force of that story gripped them all
+and they doubted never a battlement, but each man's fancy saw
+between firelight and starlight every tower clear in the air. And
+at great height upon those marvellous towers the turrets of arches
+were; queer carvings grinned down from above inaccessible
+windows; and the towers gathered in light from the lonely air
+where nothing stood but they, and flashed it far over Aragon; and
+the Ebro floated by them always new, always amazed by their
+beauty.
+
+He spoke to the six listeners on the lonely mountain, slowly,
+remembering mournfully; and never a story that Romance has known
+and told of castles in Spain has held men more than he held his
+listeners, while the sparks flew up toward the peaks of the
+Pyrenees and did not reach to them but failed in the night, giving
+place to the white stars.
+
+And when he faltered through sorrow, or memory weakening, Morano
+always, watching with glittering eyes, would touch his arm,
+sitting beside him, and ask some question, and the captive would
+answer the question and so talk sadly on.
+
+He told of the upper terraces, where heliotrope and aloe and
+oleander took sunlight far above their native earth: and though
+but rare winds carried the butterflies there, such as came to
+those fragrant terraces lingered for ever.
+
+And after a while he spoke on carelessly, and Morano's questions
+ended, and none of the men in the firelight said a word; but he
+spoke on uninterrupted, holding them as by a spell, with his eyes
+fixed far away on black crags of the Pyrenees, telling of his
+great towers: almost it might have seemed he was speaking of
+mountains. And when the fire was only a deep red glow and white
+ash showed all round it, and he ceased speaking, having told of a
+castle marvellous even amongst the towers of Spain: all sitting
+round the embers felt sad with his sadness, for his sad voice
+drifted into their very spirits as white mists enter houses, and
+all were glad when Rodriguez said to him that one of his ten tall
+towers the captive should keep and should live in it for ever. And
+the sad man thanked him sadly and showed no joy.
+
+When the tale of the castle and those great towers was done, the
+wind that blew from the snow touched all the hearers; they had
+seemed to be away by the bank of the Ebro in the heat and light of
+Spain, and now the vast night stripped them and the peaks seemed
+to close round on them. They wrapped themselves in blankets and
+lay down in their shelters. For a while they heard the wind waving
+branches and the thump of a horse's hoof restless at night; then
+they all slept except one that guarded the captive, and the
+captive himself who long lay thinking and thinking.
+
+Dawn stole through the wood and waked none of the sleepers; the
+birds all shouted at them, still they slept on; and then the
+captive's guard wakened Morano and he stirred up the sparks of the
+fire and cooked, and they breakfasted late. And soon they left the
+wood and faced the bleak slope, all of them going on foot and
+leading their horses.
+
+And the track crawled on till it came to the scorn of the peaks,
+winding over a shoulder of the Pyrenees, where the peaks gaze cold
+and contemptuous away from the things of man.
+
+In the presence of those that bore them company Rodriguez and
+Morano felt none of the deadly majesty of those peaks that regard
+so awfully over the solitudes. They passed through them telling
+cheerfully of wars the four knights had known: and descended and
+came by sunset to the lower edge of the snow. They pushed on a
+little farther and then camped; and with branches from the last
+camp that they had heaped on their horses they made another great
+fire and, huddling round it in the blankets that they had brought,
+found warmth even there so far from the hearths of men.
+
+And dawn and the cold woke them all on that treeless slope by
+barely warm embers. Morano cooked again and they ate in silence.
+And then the four knights rose sadly and one bowed and told
+Rodriguez how they must now go back to their own country. And
+grief seized on Rodriguez at his words, seeing that he was to lose
+four old friends at once and perhaps for ever, for when men have
+fought under the same banner in war they become old friends on
+that morning.
+
+"Senors," said Rodriguez, "we may never meet again!"
+
+And the other looked back to the peaks beyond which the far lands
+lay, and made a gesture with his hands.
+
+"Senor, at least," said Rodriguez, "let us camp once more
+together."
+
+And even Morano babbled a supplication.
+
+"Methinks, senor," he answered, "we are already across the
+frontier, and when we men of the sword cross frontiers
+misunderstandings arise, so that it is our custom never to pass
+across them save when we push the frontier with us, adding the
+lands over which we march to those of our liege lord."
+
+"Senors," said Rodriguez, "the whole mountain is the frontier.
+Come with us one day further." But they would not stay.
+
+All the good things that could be carried they loaded on to the
+three horses whose heads were turned towards Spain; then turned,
+all four, and said farewell to the three. And long looked each in
+the face of Rodriguez as he took his hand in fare well, for they
+had fought under the same banner and, as wayfaring was in those
+days, it was not likely that they would ever meet again. They
+turned and went with their horses back towards the land they had
+fought for.
+
+Rodriguez and his captive and Morano went sadly down the mountain.
+They came to the fir woods, and rested, and Morano cooked their
+dinner. And after a while they were able to ride their horses.
+
+They came to the foot of the mountains, and rode on past the Inn
+of the World's End. They camped in the open; and all night long
+Rodriguez or Morano guarded the captive.
+
+For two days and part of the third they followed their old course,
+catching sight again and again of the river Segre; and then they
+turned further west ward to come to Aragon further up the Ebro.
+All the way they avoided houses and camped in the open, for they
+kept their captive to themselves: and they slept warm with their
+ample store of blankets. And all the while the captive seemed
+morose or ill at ease, speaking seldom and, when he did, in
+nervous jerks.
+
+Morano, as they rode, or by the camp fire at evening, still
+questioned him now and then about his castle; and sometimes he
+almost seemed to contradict himself, but in so vast a castle may
+have been many styles of architecture, and it was difficult to
+trace a contradiction among all those towers and turrets. His name
+was Don Alvidar-of-the-Rose-pink-Castle on-Ebro.
+
+One night while all three sat and gazed at the camp-fire as men
+will, when the chilly stars are still and the merry flames are
+leaping, Rodriguez, seeking to cheer his captive's mood, told him
+some of his strange adventures. The captive listened with his
+sombre air. But when Rodriguez told how they woke on the mountain
+after their journey to the sun; and the sun was shining on their
+faces in the open, but the magician and his whole house were gone;
+then there came another look into Alvidar's eyes. And Rodriguez
+ended his tale and silence fell, broken only by Morano saying
+across the fire, "It is true," and the captive's thoughtful eyes
+gazed into the darkness. And then he also spoke.
+
+"Senor," he said, "near to my rose-pink castle which looks into
+the Ebro dwells a magician also."
+
+"Is it so?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"Indeed so, senor," said Don Alvidar. "He is my enemy but dwells
+in awe of me, and so durst never molest me except by minor
+wonders."
+
+"How know you that he is a magician?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"By those wonders," answered his captive. "He afflicts small dogs
+and my poultry. And he wears a thin, high hat: his beard is also
+extraordinary."
+
+"Long?" said Morano.
+
+"Green," answered Don Alvidar.
+
+"Is he very near the castle?" said Rodriguez and Morano together.
+
+"Too near," said Don Alvidar.
+
+"Is his house wonderful?" Rodriguez asked.
+
+"It is a common house," was the answer. "A mean, long house of one
+story. The walls are white and it is well thatched. The windows
+are painted green; there are two doors in it and by one of them
+grows a rose tree."
+
+"A rose tree?" exclaimed Rodriguez.
+
+"It seemed a rose tree," said Don Alvidar.
+
+"A captive lady chained to the wall perhaps, changed by magic,"
+suggested Morano.
+
+"Perhaps," said Don Alvidar.
+
+"A strange house for a magician," said Rodriguez, for it sounded
+like any small farmhouse in Spain.
+
+"He much affects mortal ways," replied Don Alvidar.
+
+Little more was then said, the fire being low: and Rodriguez lay
+down to sleep while Morano guarded the captive.
+
+And the day after that they came to Aragon, and in one day more
+they were across the Ebro; and then they rode west for a day along
+its southern bank looking all the while as they rode for
+Rodriguez' castle. And more and more silent and aloof, as they
+rode, grew Don Alvidar-of-the-Rose-pink-Castle-on-Ebro.
+
+And just before sunset a cry broke from the captive. "He has taken
+it!" he said. And he pointed to just such a house as he had
+described, a jolly Spanish farmhouse with white walls and thatch
+and green shutters, and a rose tree by one of the doors just as he
+had told.
+
+"The magician's house. But the castle is gone," he said.
+
+Rodriguez looked at his face and saw real alarm in it. He said
+nothing but rode on in haste, a dim hope in his mind that
+explanations at the white cottage might do something for his lost
+castle.
+
+And when the hooves were heard a woman came out of the cottage
+door by the rose tree leading a small child by the hand. And the
+captive called to the woman, "Maria, we are lost. And I gave my
+great castle with rose-pink towers that stood just here as ransom
+to this senor for my life. But now, alas, I see that that magician
+who dwelt in the house where you are now has taken it whither we
+know not."
+
+"Yes, Pedro," said the woman, "he took it yesterday." And she
+turned blue eyes upon Rodriguez.
+
+And then Morano would be silent no longer. He had thought vaguely
+for some days and intensely for the last few hundreds yards, and
+now he blurted out the thoughts that boiled in him.
+
+"Master," he shouted, "he has sold his cattle and bought this
+raiment of his, and that helmet that you opened up for him, and
+never had any castle on the Ebro with any towers to it, and never
+knew any magician, but lived in this house himself, and now your
+castle is gone, master, and as for his life ..."
+
+"Be silent a moment, Morano," said Rodriguez, and he turned to the
+woman whose eyes were on him still.
+
+"Was there a castle in this place?" he said.
+
+"Yes, senor. I swear it," she said. "And my husband, though a poor
+man, always spoke the truth."
+
+"She lies," said Morano, and Rodriguez silenced him with a
+gesture.
+
+"I will get neighbours who will swear it too," she said.
+
+"A lousy neighbourhood," said Morano.
+
+Again Rodriguez silenced him. And then the child spoke in a
+frightened voice, holding up a small cross that it had been taught
+to revere. "I swear it too," it said.
+
+Rodriguez heaved a sigh and turned away. "Master," Morano cried in
+pained astonishment, "you will not believe their swearings."
+
+"The child swore by the cross," he answered.
+
+"But, master!" Morano exclaimed.
+
+But Rodriguez would say no more. And they rode away aimless in
+silence.
+
+Galloping hooves were heard and Pedro was there. He had come to
+give up his horse. He gave its reins to the scowling Morano but
+Rodriguez said never a word. Then he ran round and kissed
+Rodriguez' hand, who still was silent, for his hopes were lost
+with the castle; but he nodded his head and so parted for ever
+from the man whom his wife called Pedro, who called himself Don
+Alvidar-of-the-Rose-pink-Castle-on-Ebro.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TENTH CHRONICLE
+
+HOW HE CAME BACK TO LOWLIGHT
+
+
+"Master," Morano said. But Rodriguez rode ahead and would not
+speak.
+
+They were riding vaguely southward. They had ample provisions on
+the horse that Morano led, as well as blankets, which gave them
+comfort at night. That night they both got the sleep they needed,
+now that there was no captive to guard. All the next day they rode
+slowly in the April weather by roads that wandered among tended
+fields; but a little way off from the fields there shone low hills
+in the sunlight, so wild, so free of man, that Rodriguez
+remembering them in later years, wondered if their wild shrubs
+just hid the frontiers of fairyland.
+
+For two days they rode by the edge of unguessable regions. Had Pan
+piped there no one had marvelled, nor though fauns had scurried
+past sheltering clumps of azaleas. In the twilight no tiny queens
+had court within rings of toadstools: yet almost, almost they
+appeared.
+
+And on the third day all at once they came to a road they knew. It
+was the road by which they had ridden when Rodriguez still had his
+dream, the way from Shadow Valley to the Ebro. And so they turned
+into the road they knew, as wanderers always will; and, still
+without aim or plan, they faced towards Shadow Valley. And in the
+evening of the day that followed that, as they looked about for a
+camping-ground, there came in sight the village on the hill which
+Rodriguez knew to be fifty miles from the forest: it was the
+village in which they had rested the first night after leaving
+Shadow Valley. They did not camp but went on to the village and
+knocked at the door of the inn. Habit guides us all at times, even
+kings are the slaves of it (though in their presence it takes the
+prouder name of precedent); and here were two wanderers without
+any plans at all; they were therefore defenceless in the grip of
+habit and, seeing an inn they knew, they loitered up to it. Mine
+host came again to the door. He cheerfully asked Rodriguez how he
+had fared on his journey, but Rodriguez would say nothing. He
+asked for lodging for himself and Morano and stabling for the
+horses: he ate and slept and paid his due, and in the morning was
+gone.
+
+Whatever impulses guided Rodriguez as he rode and Morano followed,
+he knew not what they were or even that there could be any. He
+followed the road without hope and only travelled to change his
+camping-grounds. And that night he was half-way between the
+village and Shadow Valley.
+
+Morano never spoke, for he saw that his master's disappointment
+was still raw; but it pleased him to notice, as he had done all
+day, that they were heading for the great forest. He cooked their
+evening meal in their camp by the wayside and they both ate it in
+silence. For awhile Rodriguez sat and gazed at the might-have-
+beens in the camp-fire: and when these began to be hidden by white
+ash he went to his blankets and slept. And Morano went quietly
+about the little camp, doing all that needed to be done, with
+never a word. When the horses were seen to and fed, when the
+knives were cleaned, when everything was ready for the start next
+morning, Morano went to his blankets and slept too. And in the
+morning again they wandered on.
+
+That evening they saw the low gold rays of the sun enchanting the
+tops of a forest. It almost surprised Rodriguez, travelling
+without an aim, to recognise Shadow Valley. They quickened their
+slow pace and, before twilight faded, they were under the great
+oaks; but the last of the twilight could not pierce the dimness of
+Shadow Valley, and it seemed as if night had entered the forest
+with them.
+
+They chose a camping-ground as well as they could in the darkness
+and Morano tied the horses to trees a little way off from the
+camp. Then he returned to Rodriguez and tied a blanket to the
+windward side of two trees to make a kind of bedroom for his
+master, for they had all the blankets they needed. And when this
+was done he set the emblem and banner of camps, anywhere all over
+the world in any time, for he gathered sticks and branches and lit
+a camp-fire. The first red flames went up and waved and proclaimed
+a camp: the light made a little circle, shadows ran away to the
+forest, and the circle of light on the ground and on the trees
+that stood round it became for that one night home.
+
+They heard the horses stamp as they always did in the early part
+of the night; and then Morano went to give them their fodder.
+Rodriguez sat and gazed into the fire, his mind as full of
+thoughts as the fire was full of pictures: one by one the pictures
+in the fire fell in; and all his thoughts led nowhere.
+
+He heard Morano running back the thirty or forty yards he had gone
+from the camp-fire "Master," Morano said, "the three horses are
+gone."
+
+"Gone?" said Rodriguez. There was little more to say; it was too
+dark to track them and he knew that to find three horses in Shadow
+Valley was a task that might take years. And after more thought
+than might seem to have been needed he said; "We must go on foot."
+
+"Have we far to go, master?" said Morano, for the first time
+daring to question him since they left the cottage in Spain.
+
+"I have nowhere to go," said Rodriguez. His head was downcast as
+he sat by the fire: Morano stood and looked at him unhappily, full
+of a sympathy that he found no words to express. A light wind
+slipped through the branches and everything else was still. It was
+some while before he lifted his head; and then he saw before him
+on the other side of the fire, standing with folded arms, the man
+in the brown leather jacket.
+
+"Nowhere to go!" said he. "Who needs go anywhere from Shadow
+Valley?"
+
+Rodriguez stared at him. "But I can't stay here!" he said.
+
+"There is no fairer forest known to man," said the other. "I know
+many songs that prove it."
+
+Rodriguez made no answer but dropped his eyes, gazing with
+listless glance once more at the ground. "Come, senor," said the
+man in the leather jacket. "None are unhappy in Shadow Valley."
+
+"Who are you?" said Rodriguez. Both he and Morano were gazing
+curiously at the man whom they had saved three weeks ago from the
+noose.
+
+"Your friend," answered the stranger.
+
+"No friend can help me," said Rodriguez.
+
+"Senor," said the stranger across the fire, still standing with
+folded arms, "I remain under an obligation to no man. If you have
+an enemy or love a lady, and if they dwell within a hundred miles,
+either shall be before you within a week."
+
+Rodriguez shook his head, and silence fell by the camp-fire. And
+after awhile Rodriguez, who was accustomed to dismiss a subject
+when it was ended, saw the stranger's eyes on him yet, still
+waiting for him to say more. And those clear blue eyes seemed to
+do more than wait, seemed almost to command, till they overcame
+Rodriguez' will and he obeyed and said, although he could feel
+each word struggling to stay unuttered, "Senor, I went to the wars
+to win a castle and a piece of land thereby; and might perchance
+have wed and ended my wanderings, with those of my servant here;
+but the wars are over and no castle is won."
+
+And the stranger saw by his face in the firelight, and knew from
+the tones of his voice in the still night, the trouble that his
+words had not expressed.
+
+"I remain under an obligation to no man," said the stranger. "Be
+at this place in four weeks' time, and you shall have a castle as
+large as any that men win by war, and a goodly park thereby."
+
+"Your castle, master!" said Morano delighted, whose only thought
+up to then was as to who had got his horses. But Rodriguez only
+stared: and the stranger said no more but turned on his heel. And
+then Rodriguez awoke out of his silence and wonder. "But where?"
+he said. "What castle?"
+
+"That you will see," said the stranger.
+
+"But, but how ..." said Rodriguez. What he meant was, "How can I
+believe you?" but he did not put it in words.
+
+"My word was never broken," said the other. And that is a good
+boast to make, for those of us who can make it; if we need boast
+at all.
+
+"Whose word?" said Rodriguez, looking him in the eyes.
+
+The smoke from the fire between them was thickening greyly as
+though something had been cast on it. "The word," he said, "of the
+King of Shadow Valley."
+
+Rodriguez gazing through the increasing smoke saw not to the other
+side. He rose and walked round the fire, but the strange man was
+gone.
+
+Rodriguez came back to his place by the fire and sat long there in
+silence. Morano was bubbling over to speak, but respected his
+master's silence: for Rodriguez was gazing into the deeps of the
+fire seeing pictures there that were brighter than any that he had
+known. They were so clear now that they seemed almost true. He saw
+Serafina's face there looking full at him. He watched it long
+until other pictures hid it, visions that had no meaning for
+Rodriguez. And not till then he spoke. And when he spoke his face
+was almost smiling.
+
+"Well, Morano," he said, "have we come by that castle at last?"
+
+"That man does not lie, master," he answered: and his eyes were
+glittering with shrewd conviction.
+
+"What shall we do then?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"Let us go to some village, master," said Morano, "until the time
+he said."
+
+"What village?" Rodriguez asked.
+
+"I know not, master," answered Morano, his face a puzzle of
+innocence and wonder; and Rodriguez fell back into thought again.
+And the dancing flames calmed down to a deep, quiet glow; and soon
+Rodriguez stepped back a yard or two from the fire to where Morano
+had prepared his bed; and, watching the fire still, and turning
+over thoughts that flashed and changed as fast as the embers, he
+went to wonderful dreams that were no more strange or elusive than
+that valley's wonderful king.
+
+When he spoke in the morning the camp-fire was newly lit and there
+was a smell of bacon; and Morano, out of breath and puzzled, was
+calling to him.
+
+"Master," he said, "I was mistaken about those horses."
+
+"Mistaken?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"They were just as I left them, master, all tied to the tree with
+my knots."
+
+Rodriguez left it at that. Morano could make mistakes and the
+forest was full of wonders: anything might happen. "We will ride,"
+he said.
+
+Morano's breakfast was as good as ever; and, when he had packed up
+those few belongings that make a dwelling-place of any chance spot
+in the wilderness, they mounted the horses, which were surely
+there, and rode away through sunlight and green leaves. They rode
+slow, for the branches were low over the path, and whoever canters
+in a forest and closes his eyes against a branch has to consider
+whether he will open them to be whipped by the next branch or
+close them till he bumps his head into a tree. And it suited
+Rodriguez to loiter, for he thought thus to meet the King of
+Shadow Valley again or his green bowmen and learn the answers to
+innumerable questions about his castle which were wandering
+through his mind.
+
+They ate and slept at noon in the forest's glittering greenness.
+
+They passed afterwards by the old house in the wood, in which the
+bowmen feasted, for they followed the track that they had taken
+before. They knocked loud on the door as they passed but the house
+was empty. They heard the sound of a multitude felling trees, but
+whenever they approached the sound of chopping ceased. Again and
+again they left the track and rode towards the sound of chopping,
+and every time the chopping died away just as they drew close.
+They saw many a tree half felled, but never a green bowman. And at
+last they left it as one of the wonders of the forest and returned
+to the track lest they lose it, for the track was more important
+to them than curiosity, and evening had come and was filling the
+forest with dimness, and shadows stealing across the track were
+beginning to hide it away. In the distance they heard the
+invisible woodmen chopping.
+
+And then they camped again and lit their fire; and night came down
+and the two wanderers slept.
+
+The nightingale sang until he woke the cuckoo: and the cuckoo
+filled the leafy air so full of his two limpid notes that the
+dreams of Rodriguez heard them and went away, back over their
+border to dreamland. Rodriguez awoke Morano, who lit his fire: and
+soon they had struck their camp and were riding on.
+
+By noon they saw that if they hurried on they could come to
+Lowlight by nightfall. But this was not Rodriguez' plan, for he
+had planned to ride into Lowlight, as he had done once before, at
+the hour when Serafina sat in her balcony in the cool of the
+evening, as Spanish ladies in those days sometimes did. So they
+tarried long by their resting-place at noon and then rode slowly
+on. And when they camped that night they were still in the forest.
+
+"Morano," said Rodriguez over the camp-fire, "tomorrow brings me
+to Lowlight."
+
+"Aye, master," said Morano, "we shall be there tomorrow."
+
+"That senor with whom I had a meeting there," said Rodriguez, "he ..."
+
+"He loves me not," said Morano.
+
+"He would surely kill you," replied Rodriguez.
+
+Morano looked sideways at his frying-pan.
+
+"It would therefore be better," continued Rodriguez, "that you
+should stay in this camp while I give such greetings of ceremony
+in Lowlight as courtesy demands."
+
+"I will stay, master," said Morano.
+
+Rodriguez was glad that this was settled, for he felt that to
+follow his dreams of so many nights to that balconied house in
+Lowlight with Morano would be no better than visiting a house
+accompanied by a dog that had bitten one of the family.
+
+"I will stay," repeated Morano. "But, master ..." The fat man's
+eyes were all supplication.
+
+"Yes?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"Leave me your mandolin," implored Morano.
+
+"My mandolin?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"Master," said Morano, "that senor who likes my fat body so ill he
+would kill me, he ..."
+
+"Well?" said Rodriguez, for Morano was hesitating.
+
+"He likes your mandolin no better, master."
+
+Rodriguez resented a slight to his mandolin as much as a slight to
+his sword, but he smiled as he looked at Morano's anxious face.
+
+"He would kill you for your mandolin," Morano went on eagerly, "as
+he would kill me for my frying-pan."
+
+And at the mention of that frying-pan Rodriguez frowned, although
+it had given him many a good meal since the night it offended in
+Lowlight. And he would sooner have gone to the wars without a
+sword than under the balcony of his heart's desire without a
+mandolin.
+
+So Rodriguez would hear no more of Morano's request; and soon he
+left the fire and went to lie down; but Morano sighed and sat
+gazing on into the embers unhappily; while thoughts plodded slow
+through his mind, leading to nothing. Late that night he threw
+fresh logs on the camp-fire, so that when they awoke there was
+still fire in the embers And when they had eaten their breakfast
+Rodriguez said farewell to Morano, saying that he had business in
+Lowlight that might keep him a few days. But Morano said not
+farewell then, for he would follow his master as far as the midday
+halt to cook his next meal. And when noon came they were beyond
+the forest.
+
+Once more Morano cooked bacon. Then while Rodriguez slept Morano
+took his cloak and did all that could be done by brushing and
+smoothing to give back to it that air that it some time had,
+before it had flapped upon so many winds and wrapped Rodriguez on
+such various beds, and met the vicissitudes that make this story.
+
+For the plume he could do little.
+
+And his master awoke, late in the afternoon, and went to his horse
+and gave Morano his orders. He was to go back with two of the
+horses to their last camp in the forest and take with him all
+their kit except one blanket and make himself comfortable there
+and wait till Rodriguez came.
+
+And then Rodriguez rode slowly away, and Morano stood gazing
+mournfully and warningly at the mandolin; and the warnings were
+not lost upon Rodriguez, though he would never admit that he saw
+in Morano's staring eyes any wise hint that he heeded.
+
+And Morano sighed, and went and untethered his horses; and soon he
+was riding lonely back to the forest. And Rodriguez taking the
+other way saw at once the towers of Lowlight.
+
+Does my reader think that he then set spurs to his horse,
+galloping towards that house about whose balcony his dreams flew
+every night? No, it was far from evening; far yet from the colour
+and calm in which the light with never a whisper says farewell to
+Earth, but with a gesture that the horizon hides takes silent
+leave of the fields on which she has danced with joy; far yet from
+the hour that shone for Serafina like a great halo round her and
+round her mother's house.
+
+We cannot believe that one hour more than another shone upon
+Serafina, or that the dim end of the evening was only hers: but
+these are the Chronicles of Rodriguez, who of all the things that
+befell him treasured most his memory of Serafina in the twilight,
+and who held that this hour was hers as much as her raiment and
+her balcony: such therefore it is in these chronicles.
+
+And so he loitered, waiting for the slow sun to set: and when at
+last a tint on the walls of Lowlight came with the magic of
+Earth's most faery hour he rode in slowly not perhaps wholly
+unwitting, for all his anxious thoughts of Serafina, that a little
+air of romance from the Spring and the evening followed this
+lonely rider.
+
+From some way off he saw that balcony that had drawn him back from
+the other side of the far Pyrenees. Sometimes he knew that it drew
+him and mostly he knew it not; yet always that curved balcony
+brought him nearer, ever since he turned from the field of the
+false Don Alvidar: the balcony held him with invisible threads,
+such as those with which Earth draws in the birds at evening. And
+there was Serafina in her balcony.
+
+When Rodriguez saw Serafina sitting there in the twilight, just as
+he had often dreamed, he looked no more but lowered his head to
+the withered rose that he carried now in his hand, the rose that
+he had found by that very balcony under another moon. And, gazing
+still at the rose, he rode on under the balcony, and passed it,
+until his hoof-beats were heard no more in Lowlight and he and his
+horse were one dim shape between the night and the twilight. And
+still he held on.
+
+He knew not yet, but only guessed, who had thrown that rose from
+the balcony on the night when he slept on the dust: he knew not
+who it was that he fought on the same night, and dared not guess
+what that unknown hidalgo might be to Serafina. He had no claim to
+more from that house, which once gave him so cold a welcome, than
+thus to ride by it in silence. And he knew as he rode that the
+cloak and the plume that he wore scarce seemed the same as those
+that had floated by when more than a month ago he had ridden past
+that balcony; and the withered rose that he carried added one more
+note of autumn. And yet he hoped.
+
+And so he rode into twilight and was hid from the sight of the
+village, a worn, pathetic figure, trusting vaguely to vague powers
+of good fortune that govern all men, but that favour youth.
+
+And, sure enough, it was not yet wholly moonlight when cantering
+hooves came down the road behind him. It was once more that young
+hidalgo. And as soon as he drew rein beside Rodriguez both reached
+out merry hands as though their former meeting had been some
+errand of joy. And as Rodriguez looked him in the eyes, while the
+two men leaned over clasping hands, in light still clear though
+faded, he could not doubt Serafina was his sister.
+
+"Senor," said his old enemy, "will you tarry with us, in our house
+a few days, if your journey is not urgent?"
+
+Rodriguez gasped for joy; for the messenger from Lowlight, the
+certainty that here was no rival, the summons to the house of his
+dreams' pilgrimage, came all together: his hand still clasped the
+stranger's. Yet he answered with the due ceremony that that age
+and land demanded: then they turned and rode together towards
+Lowlight. And first the young men told each other their names; and
+the stranger told how he dwelt with his mother and sister in the
+house that Rodriguez knew, and his name was Don Alderon of the
+Valley of Dawnlight. His house had dwelt in that valley since
+times out of knowledge; but then the Moors had come and his
+forbears had fled to Lowlight: the Moors were gone now, for which
+Saint Michael and all fighting Saints be praised; but there were
+certain difficulties about his right to the Valley of Dawnlight.
+So they dwelt in Lowlight still.
+
+And Rodriguez told of the war that there was beyond the Pyrenees
+and how the just cause had won, but little more than that he was
+able to tell, for he knew scarce more of the cause for which he
+had fought than History knows of it, who chooses her incidents and
+seems to forget so much. And as they talked they came to the house
+with the balcony. A waning moon cast light over it that was now no
+longer twilight; but was the light of wild things of the woods,
+and birds of prey, and men in mountains outlawed by the King, and
+magic, and mystery, and the quests of love. Serafina had left her
+place: lights gleamed now in the windows. And when the door was
+opened the hall seemed to Rodriguez so much less hugely hollow, so
+much less full of ominous whispered echoes, that his courage rose
+high as he went through it with Alderon, and they entered the room
+together that they had entered together before. In the long room
+beyond many candles he saw Dona Serafina and her mother rising up
+to greet him. Neither the ceremonies of that age nor Rodriguez'
+natural calm would have entirely concealed his emotion had not his
+face been hidden as he bowed. They spoke to him; they asked him of
+his travels; Rodriguez answered with effort. He saw by their
+manner that Don Alderon must have explained much in his favour. He
+had this time, to cheer him, a very different greeting; and yet he
+felt little more at ease than when he had stood there late at
+night before, with one eye bandaged and wearing only one shoe,
+suspected of he knew not what brawling and violence.
+
+It was not until Dona Mirana, the mother of Serafina, asked him to
+play to them on his mandolin that Rodriguez' ease returned. He
+bowed then and brought round his mandolin, which had been slung
+behind him; and knew a triumphant champion was by him now, one old
+in the ways of love and wise in the sorrows of man, a slender but
+potent voice, well-skilled to tell what there were not words to
+say; a voice unhindered by language, unlimited even by thought,
+whose universal meaning was heard and understood, sometimes
+perhaps by wandering spirits of light, beaten far by some evil
+thought for their heavenly courses and passing close along the
+coasts of Earth.
+
+And Rodriguez played no tune he had ever known, nor any airs that
+he had heard men play in lanes in Andalusia; but he told of things
+that he knew not, of sadnesses that he had scarcely felt and
+undreamed exaltations. It was the hour of need, and the mandolin
+knew.
+
+And when all was told that the mandolin can tell of whatever is
+wistfulest in the spirit of man, a mood of merriment entered its
+old curved sides and there came from its hollows a measure such as
+they dance to when laughter goes over the greens in Spain. Never a
+song sang Rodriguez; the mandolin said all.
+
+And what message did Serafina receive from those notes that were
+strange even to Rodriguez? Were they not stranger to her? I have
+said that spirits blown far out of their course and nearing the
+mundane coasts hear mortal music sometimes, and hearing
+understand. And if they cannot understand those snatches of song,
+all about mortal things and human needs, that are wafted rarely to
+them by chance passions, how much more surely a young mortal
+heart, so near Rodriguez, heard what he would say and understood
+the message however strange.
+
+When Dona Mirana and her daughter rose, exchanging their little
+curtsies for the low bows of Rodriguez, and so retired for the
+night, the long room seemed to Rodriguez now empty of threatening
+omens. The great portraits that the moon had lit, and that had
+frowned at him in the moonlight when he came here before, frowned
+at him now no longer. The anger that he had known to lurk in the
+darkness on pictured faces of dead generations had gone with the
+gloom that it haunted: they were all passionless now in the quiet
+light of the candles. He looked again at the portraits eye to eye,
+remembering looks they had given him in the moonlight, and all
+looked back at him with ages of apathy; and he knew that whatever
+glimmer of former selves there lurks about portraits of the dead
+and gone was thinking only of their own past days in years remote
+from Rodriguez. Whether their anger had flashed for a moment over
+the ages on that night a month from now, or whether it was only
+the moonlight, he never knew. Their spirits were back now surely
+amongst their own days, whence they deigned not to look on the
+days that make these chronicles.
+
+Not till then did Rodriguez admit, or even know, that he had not
+eaten since his noonday meal. But now he admitted this to Don
+Alderon's questions; and Don Alderon led him to another chamber
+and there regaled him with all the hospitality for which that time
+was famous. And when Rodriguez had eaten, Don Alderon sent for
+wine, and the butler brought it in an olden flagon, dark wine of a
+precious vintage: and soon the two young men were drinking
+together and talking of the wickedness of the Moors. And while
+they talked the night grew late and chilly and still, and the hour
+came when moths are fewer and young men think of bed. Then Don
+Alderon showed his guest to an upper room, a long room dim with
+red hangings, and carvings in walnut and oak, which the one candle
+he carried barely lit but only set queer shadows scampering. And
+here he left Rodriguez, who was soon in bed, with the great red
+hangings round him. And awhile he wondered at the huge silence of
+the house all round him, with never a murmur, never an echo, never
+a sigh; for he missed the passing of winds, branches waving, the
+stirring of small beasts, birds of prey calling, and the hundred
+sounds of the night; but soon through the silence came sleep.
+
+He did not need to dream, for here in the home of Serafina he had
+come to his dreams' end.
+
+Another day shone on another scene; for the sunlight that went in
+a narrow stream of gold and silver between the huge red curtains
+had sent away the shadows that had stalked overnight through the
+room, and had scattered the eeriness that had lurked on the far
+side of furniture, and all the dimness was gone that the long red
+room had harboured. And for a while Rodriguez did not know where
+he was; and for a while, when he remembered, he could not believe
+it true. He dressed with care, almost with fear, and preened his
+small moustachios, which at last had grown again just when he
+would have despaired. Then he descended, and found that he had
+slept late, though the three of that ancient house were seated yet
+at the table, and Serafina all dressed in white seemed to
+Rodriguez to be shining in rivalry with the morning. Ah dreams and
+fancies of youth!
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ELEVENTH CHRONICLE
+
+HOW HE TURNED TO GARDENING AND HIS SWORD RESTED
+
+
+These were the days that Rodriguez always remembered; and, side by
+side with them, there lodged in his memory, and went down with
+them into his latter years, the days and nights when he went
+through the Pyrenees and walked when he would have slept but had
+to walk or freeze: and by some queer rule that guides us he
+treasured them both in his memory, these happy days in this garden
+and the frozen nights on the peaks.
+
+For Serafina showed Rodriguez the garden that behind the house ran
+narrow and long to the wild. There were rocks with heliotrope
+pouring over them and flowers peeping behind them, and great
+azaleas all in triumphant bloom, and ropes of flowering creepers
+coming down from trees, and oleanders, and a plant named popularly
+Joy of the South, and small paths went along it edged with shells
+brought from the far sea.
+
+There was only one street in the village, and you did not go far
+among the great azaleas before you lost sight of the gables; and
+you did not go far before the small paths ended with their shells
+from the distant sea, and there was the mistress of all gardeners
+facing you, Mother Nature nursing her children, the things of the
+wild. She too had azaleas and oleanders, but they stood more
+solitary in their greater garden than those that grew in the
+garden of Dona Mirana; and she too had little paths, only they
+were without borders and without end. Yet looking from the long
+and narrow garden at the back of that house in Lowlight to the
+wider garden that sweeps round the world, and is fenced by Space
+from the garden in Venus and by Space from the garden in Mars, you
+scarce saw any difference or noticed where they met: the solitary
+azaleas beyond were gathered together by distance, and from
+Lowlight to the horizon seemed all one garden in bloom. And
+afterwards, all his years, whenever Rodriguez heard the name of
+Spain, spoken by loyal men, it was thus that he thought of it, as
+he saw it now.
+
+And here he used to walk with Serafina when she tended flowers in
+the cool of the morning or went at evening to water favourite
+blooms. And Rodriguez would bring with him his mandolin, and
+sometimes he touched it lightly or even sang, as they rested on
+some carved seat at the garden's end, looking out towards shadowy
+shrubs on the shining hill, but mostly he heard her speak of the
+things she loved, of what moths flew to their garden, and which
+birds sang, and how the flowers grew. Serafina sat no longer in
+her balcony but, disguising idleness by other names, they loitered
+along those paths that the seashells narrowed; yet there was a
+grace in their loitering such as we have not in our dances now.
+And evening stealing in from the wild places, from darkening
+azaleas upon distant hills, still found them in the garden, found
+Rodriguez singing in idleness undisguised, or anxiously helping in
+some trivial task, tying up some tendril that had gone awry,
+helping some magnolia that the wind had wounded. Almost unnoticed
+by him the sunlight would disappear, and the coloured blaze of the
+sunset, and then the gloaming; till the colours of all the flowers
+queerly changed and they shone with that curious glow which they
+wear in the dusk. They returned then to the house, the garden
+behind them with its dim hushed air of a secret, before them the
+candlelight like a different land. And after the evening meal
+Alderon and Rodriguez would sit late together discussing the
+future of the world, Rodriguez holding that it was intended that
+the earth should be ruled by Spain, and Alderon fearing it would
+all go to the Moors.
+
+Days passed thus.
+
+And then one evening Rodriguez was in the garden with Serafina;
+the flowers, dim and pale and more mysterious than ever, poured
+out their scent towards the coming night, luring huge hawk-moths
+from the far dusk that was gathering about the garden, to hover
+before each bloom on myriad wingbeats too rapid for human eye:
+another inch and the fairies had peeped out from behind azaleas,
+yet both of these late loiterers felt fairies were surely there:
+it seemed to be Nature's own most secret hour, upon which man
+trespasses if he venture forth from his house: an owl from his
+hidden haunt flew nearer the garden and uttered a clear call once
+to remind Rodriguez of this: and Rodriguez did not heed, but
+walked in silence.
+
+He had played his mandolin. It had uttered to the solemn hush of
+the understanding evening all it was able to tell; and after that
+cry, grown piteous with so many human longings, for it was an old
+mandolin, Rodriguez felt there was nothing left for his poor words
+to say. So he went dumb and mournful.
+
+Serafina would have heard him had he spoken, for her thoughts
+vibrated yet with the voice of the mandolin, which had come to her
+hearing as an ambassador from Rodriguez, but he found no words to
+match with the mandolin's high mood. His eyes said, and his sighs
+told, what the mandolin had uttered; but his tongue was silent.
+
+And then Serafina said, as he walked all heavy with silence past a
+curving slope of dimly glowing azaleas, "You like flowers, senor?"
+
+"Senorita, I adore them," he replied.
+
+"Indeed?" said Dona Serafina.
+
+"Indeed I do," said Rodriguez.
+
+"And yet," asked Dona Serafina, "was it not a somewhat withered or
+altogether faded flower that you carried, unless I fancied wrong,
+when you rode past our balcony?"
+
+"It was indeed faded," said Rodriguez, "for the rose was some
+weeks old."
+
+"One who loved flowers, I thought," said Serafina, "would perhaps
+care more for them fresh."
+
+Half-dumb though Rodriguez was his shrewdness did not desert him.
+To have said that he had the rose from Serafina would have been to
+claim as though proven what was yet no more than a hope.
+
+"Senorita," he said, "I found the flower on holy ground."
+
+"I did not know," she said, "that you had travelled so far."
+
+"I found it here," he said, "under your balcony."
+
+"Perchance I let it fall," said she. "It was idle of me."
+
+"I guard it still," he said, and drew forth that worn brown rose.
+
+"It was idle of me," said Serafina.
+
+But then in that scented garden among the dim lights of late
+evening the ghost of that rose introduced their spirits one to the
+other, so that the listening flowers heard Rodriguez telling the
+story of his heart, and, bending over the shell-bordered path,
+heard Serafina's answer; and all they seemed to do was but to
+watch the evening, with leaves uplifted in the hope of rain.
+
+Film after film of dusk dropped down from where twilight had been,
+like an army of darkness slowly pitching their tents on ground
+that had been lost to the children of light. Out of the wild lands
+all the owls flew nearer: their long, clear cries and the huge
+hush between them warned all those lands that this was not man's
+hour. And neither Rodriguez nor Serafina heard them.
+
+In pale blue sky where none had thought to see it one smiling star
+appeared. It was Venus watching lovers, as men of the crumbled
+centuries had besought her to do, when they named her so long ago,
+kneeling upon their hills with bended heads, and arms stretched
+out to her sweet eternal scrutiny. Beneath her wandering rays as
+they danced down to bless them Rodriguez and Serafina talked low
+in the sight of the goddess, and their voices swayed through the
+flowers with whispers and winds, not troubling the little wild
+creatures that steal out shy in the dusk, and Nature forgave them
+for being abroad in that hour; although, so near that a single
+azalea seemed to hide it, so near seemed to beckon and whisper old
+Nature's eldest secret.
+
+When flowers glimmered and Venus smiled and all things else were
+dim, they turned on one of those little paths hand in hand
+homeward.
+
+Dona Mirana glanced once at her daughter's eyes and said nothing.
+Don Alderon renewed his talk with Rodriguez, giving reasons for
+his apprehension of the conquest of the world by the Moors, which
+he had thought of since last night; and Rodriguez agreed with all
+that Don Alderon said, but understood little, being full of dreams
+that seemed to dance on the further, side of the candlelight to a
+strange, new, unheard tune that his heart was aware of. He gazed
+much at Serafina and said little.
+
+He drank no wine that night with Don Alderon: what need had he of
+wine? On wonderful journeys that my pen cannot follow, for all the
+swiftness of the wing from which it came; on darting journeys
+outspeeding the lithe swallow or that great wanderer the white-
+fronted goose, his young thoughts raced by a myriad of golden
+evenings far down the future years. And what of the days he saw?
+Did he see them truly? Enough that he saw them in vision. Saw them
+as some lone shephered on lifted downs sees once go by with music
+a galleon out of the East, with windy sails, and masts ablaze with
+pennants, and heroes in strange dress singing new songs; and the
+galleon goes nameless by till the singing dies away. What ship was
+it? Whither bound? Why there? Enough that he has seen it. Thus do
+we glimpse the glory of rare days as we swing round the sun; and
+youth is like some high headland from which to see.
+
+On the next day he spoke with Dona Mirano. There was little to say
+but to observe the courtesies appropriate to this occasion, for
+Dona Mirana and her daughter had spoken long together already; and
+of one thing he could say little, and indeed was dumb when asked
+of it, and that was the question of his home. And then he said
+that he had a castle; and when Dona Mirana asked him where it was
+he said vaguely it was to the North. He trusted the word of the
+King of Shadow Valley and so he spoke of his castle as a man
+speaks the truth. And when she asked him of his castle again,
+whether on rock or river or in leafy lands, he began to describe
+how its ten towers stood, being builded of a rock that was
+slightly pink, and how they glowed across a hundred fields,
+especially at evening; and suddenly he ceased, perceiving all in a
+moment he was speaking unwittingly in the words of Don Alvidar and
+describing to Dona Mirana that rose-pink castle on Ebro. And Dona
+Mirana knew then that there was some mystery about Rodriguez'
+home.
+
+She spoke kindly to Rodriguez, yet she neither gave her consent
+nor yet withheld it, and he knew there was no immediate hope in
+her words. Graceful as were his bows as he withdrew, he left with
+scarcely another word to say. All day his castle hung over him
+like a cloud, not nebulous and evanescent only, but brooding
+darkly, boding storms, such as the orange blossoms dread.
+
+He walked again in the garden with Serafina, but Dona Mirana was
+never far, and the glamour of the former evening, lit by one star,
+was driven from the garden by his anxieties about that castle of
+which he could not speak. Serafina asked him of his home. He would
+not parry her question, and yet he could not tell her that all
+their future hung on the promise of a man in an old leathern
+jacket calling himself a king. So the mystery of his habitation
+deepened, spoiling the glamour of the evening. He spoke, instead,
+of the forest, hoping she might know something of that strange
+monarch to whom they dwelt so near; but she glanced uneasily
+towards Shadow Valley and told him that none in Lowlight went that
+way. Sorrow grew heavier round Rodriguez' heart at this: believing
+in the promise of a man whose eyes he trusted he had asked
+Serafina to marry him, and Serafina had said Yes; and now he found
+she knew nothing of such a man, which seemed somehow to Rodriguez
+to weaken his promise, and, worst of all, she feared the place
+where he lived. He welcomed the approach of Dona Mirana, and all
+three returned to the house. For the rest of that evening he spoke
+little; but he had formed his project.
+
+When the two ladies retired Rodriguez, who had seemed tongue-tied
+for many hours, turned to Don Alderon. His mother had told Don
+Alderon nothing yet; for she was troubled by the mystery of
+Rodriguez' castle, and would give him time to make it clear if he
+could; for there was something about Rodriguez of which with many
+pages I have tried to acquaint my reader but which was clear when
+first she saw him to Dona Mirana. In fact she liked him at once,
+as I hope that perhaps by now my reader may. He turned to Don
+Alderon, who was surprised to see the vehemence with which his
+guest suddenly spoke after those hours of silence, and Rodriguez
+told him the story of his love and the story of both his castles,
+that which had vanished from the bank of the Ebro and that which
+was promised him by the King of Shadow Valley. And often Don
+Alderon interrupted.
+
+"Oh, Rodriguez," he said, "you are welcome to our ancient,
+unfortunate house": and later he said, "I have met no man that had
+a prettier way with the sword."
+
+But Rodriguez held on to the end, telling all he had to tell; and
+especially that he was landless and penniless but for that one
+promise; and as for the sword, he said, he was but as a child
+playing before the sword of Don Alderon. And this Don Alderon said
+was in no wise so, though there were a few cunning passes that he
+had learned, hoping that the day might come for him to do God a
+service thereby by slaying some of the Moors: and heartily he gave
+his consent and felicitation. But this Rodriguez would not have:
+"Come with me," he said, "to the forest to the place where I met
+this man, and if we find him not there we will go to the house in
+which his bowmen feast and there have news of him, and he shall
+show us the castle of his promise and, if it be such a castle as
+you approve, then your consent shall be given, but if not ..."
+
+"Gladly indeed," said Don Alderon. "We will start tomorrow."
+
+And Rodriguez took his words literally, though his host had meant
+no more than what we should call "one of these days," but
+Rodriguez was being consumed with a great impatience. And so they
+arranged it, and Don Alderon went to bed with a feeling, which is
+favourable to dreams, that on the next day they went upon an
+adventure; for neither he nor anyone in that village had entered
+Shadow Valley.
+
+Once more next morning Rodriguez walked with Serafina, with
+something of the romance of the garden gone, for Dona Mirana
+walked there too; and romance is like one of those sudden,
+wonderful colours that flash for a moment out of a drop of dew; a
+passing shadow obscures them; and ask another to see it, and the
+colour is not the same: move but a yard and the ray of enchantment
+is gone. Dona Mirana saw the romance of that garden, but she saw
+it from thirty years away; it was all different what she saw, all
+changed from a certain day (for love was love in the old days):
+and to Rodriguez and Serafina it seemed that she could not see
+romance at all, and somehow that dimmed it. Almost their eyes
+seemed to search amongst the azaleas for the romance of that other
+evening.
+
+And then Rodriguez told Serafina that he was riding away with her
+brother to see about the affairs of his castle, and that they
+would return in a few days. Scarcely a hint he gave that those
+affairs might not prosper, for he trusted the word of the King of
+Shadow Valley. His confidence had returned: and soon, with swords
+at side and cloaks floating brilliant on light winds of April,
+Rodriguez and Alderon rode away together.
+
+Soon in the distance they saw Shadow Valley. And then Rodriguez
+bethought him of Morano and of the foul wrong he committed against
+Don Alderon with his frying-pan, and how he was there in the camp
+to which he was bringing his friend. And so he said: "That vile
+knave Morano still lives and insists on serving me."
+
+"If he be near," said Don Alderon, "I pray you to disarm him of
+his frying-pan for the sake of my honour, which does not suffer me
+to be stricken with culinary weapons, but only with the sword, the
+lance, or even bolts of cannon or arquebuss ..." He was thinking
+of yet more weapons when Rodriguez put spurs to his horse. "He is
+near," he said; "I will ride on and disarm him."
+
+So Rodriguez came cantering into the forest while Don Alderon
+ambled a mile or so behind him.
+
+And there he found his old camp and saw Morano, sitting upon the
+ground by a small fire. Morano sprang up at once with joy in his
+eyes, his face wreathed with questions, which he did not put into
+words for he did not pry openly into his master's affairs.
+
+"Morano," said Rodriguez, "give me your frying-pan."
+
+"My frying-pan?" said Morano.
+
+"Yes," said Rodriguez. And when he held in his hand that
+blackened, greasy utensil he told Morano, "That senor you met in
+Lowlight rides with me."
+
+The cheerfulness faded out of Morano's face as light fades at
+sunset. "Master," he said, "he will surely slay me now."
+
+"He will not slay you," said Rodriguez.
+
+"Master," Morano said, "he hopes for my fat carcase as much as men
+hope for the unicorn, when they wear their bright green coats and
+hunt him with dogs in Spring." I know not what legend Morano
+stored in his mind, nor how much of it was true. "And when he
+finds me without my frying-pan he will surely slay me."
+
+"That senor," said Rodriguez emphatically, "must not be hit with
+the frying-pan."
+
+"That is a hard rule, master," said Morano.
+
+And Rodriguez was indignant, when he heard that, that anyone
+should thus blaspheme against an obvious law of chivalry: while
+Morano's only thought was upon the injustice of giving up the
+sweets of life for the sake of a frying-pan. Thus they were at
+cross-purposes. And for some while they stood silent, while
+Rodriguez hung the reins of his horse over the broken branch of a
+tree. And then Don Alderon rode into the wood.
+
+All then that was most pathetic in Morano's sense of injustice
+looked out of his eyes as he turned them upon his master. But Don
+Alderon scarcely glanced at all at Morano, even when he handed to
+him the reins of his horse as he walked on towards Rodriguez.
+
+And there in that leafy place they rested all through the evening,
+for they had not started so early upon their journey as travellers
+should. Eight days had gone since Rodriguez had left that small
+camp to ride to Lowlight, and to the apex of his life towards
+which all his days had ascended; and in that time Morano had
+collected good store of wood and, in little ways unthought of by
+dwellers in cities, had made the place like such homes as
+wanderers find. Don Alderon was charmed with their roof of
+towering greenness, and with the choirs of those which inhabited
+it and which were now all coming home to sing. And at some moment
+in the twilight, neither Rodriguez nor Alderon noticed when,
+Morano repossessed himself of his frying-pan, unbidden by
+Rodriguez, but acting on a certain tacit permission that there
+seemed to be in the twilight or in the mood of the two young men
+as they sat by the fire. And soon he was cooking once more, at a
+fire of his own, with something of the air that you see upon a
+Field Marshal's face who has lost his baton and found it again.
+Have you ever noticed it, reader?
+
+And when the meal was ready Morano served it in silence, moving
+unobtrusively in the gloom of the wood; for he knew that he was
+forgiven, yet not so openly that he wished to insist on his
+presence or even to imply his possession of the weapon that fried
+the bacon. So, like a dryad he moved from tree to tree, and like
+any fabulous creature was gone again. And the two young men supped
+well, and sat on and on, watching the sparks go up on innumerable
+journeys from the fire at which they sat, to be lost to sight in
+huge wastes of blackness and stars, lost to sight utterly, lost
+like the spirit of man to the gaze of our wonder when we try to
+follow its journey beyond the hearths that we know.
+
+All the next day they rode on through the forest, till they came
+to the black circle of the old fire of their next camp. And here
+Rodriguez halted on account of the attraction that one of his old
+camps seems to have for a wanderer. It drew his feet towards it,
+this blackened circle, this hearth that for one night made one
+spot in the wilderness home. Don Alderon did not care whether they
+tarried or hurried; he loved his journey through this leafy land;
+the cool night-breeze slipping round the tree-trunks was new to
+him, and new was the comradeship of the abundant stars; the quest
+itself was a joy to him; with his fancy he built Rodriguez'
+mysterious castle no less magnificently than did Don Alvidar.
+Sometimes they talked of the castle, each of the young men
+picturing it as he saw it; but in the warmth of the camp-fire
+after Morano slept they talked of more than these chronicles can
+tell.
+
+In the morning they pressed on as fast as the forest's low boughs
+would allow them. They passed somewhere near the great cottage in
+which the bowmen feasted; but they held on, as they had decided
+after discussion to do, for the last place in which Rodriguez had
+seen the King of Shadow Valley, which was the place of his
+promise. And before any dimness came even to the forest, or golden
+shafts down colonnades which were before all cathedrals, they
+found the old camp that they sought, which still had a clear
+flavour of magic for Morano on account of the moth-like coming and
+going of his three horses after he had tied them to that tree. And
+here they looked for the King of Shadow Valley; and then Rodriguez
+called him; and then all three of them called him, shouting "King
+of Shadow Valley" all together. No answer came: the woods were
+without echo: nothing stirred but fallen leaves. But before those
+miles of silence could depress them Rodriguez hit upon a simple
+plan, which was that he and Alderon should search all round, far
+from the track, while Morano stayed in the camp and shouted
+frequently, and they would not go out of hearing of his voice: for
+Shadow Valley had a reputation of being a bad forest for
+travellers to find their way there; indeed, few ever attempted to.
+So they did as he said, he and Alderon searching in different
+directions, while Morano remained in the camp, lifting a large and
+melancholy voice. And though rumour said it was hard to find the
+way when twenty yards from the track in Shadow Valley, it did not
+say it was hard to find the green bowmen: and Rodriguez, knowing
+that they guarded the forest as the shadows of trees guard the
+coolness, was assured he would meet with some of them even though
+he should miss their master. So he and Alderon searched till the
+forest darkness came and only birds on high branches still had
+light; and they never saw the King of Shadow Valley or any trace
+whatever of any man. And Alderon first returned to the encampment;
+but Rodriguez searched on into the night, searching and calling
+through the darkness, and feeling, as every minute went by and
+every faint call of Morano, that his castle was fading away,
+slipping past oak-tree and thorn-bush, to take its place among the
+unpitying stars. And when he returned at last from his useless
+search he found Morano standing by a good fire, and the sight of
+it a little cheered Rodriguez, and the sight of the firelight on
+Morano's face, and the homely comfort of the camp, for everything
+is comparative.
+
+And over their supper Rodriguez and Alderon agreed that they had
+come to a part of the forest too remote from the home of the King
+of Shadow Valley, and decided to go the next day to the house of
+the green bowmen: and before he slept Rodriguez felt once more
+that all was well with his castle.
+
+Yet when the next day came they searched again, for Rodriguez
+remembered how it was to this very place that the King of Shadow
+Valley had bidden him come in four weeks, and though this period
+was not yet accomplished, he felt, and Alderon fully agreed, they
+had waited long enough: so they searched all the morning, and then
+fulfilled their decision of overnight by riding for the great
+cottage Rodriguez knew. All the way they met no one. And
+Rodriguez' gaiety came back as they rode, for he and Don Alderon
+recognised more and more clearly that the bowmen's great cottage
+was the place they should have gone at first.
+
+In early evening they were just at their journey's end; but barely
+had they left the track that they had ridden the day before,
+barely taken the smaller path that led after a few hundred yards
+to the cottage when they found themselves stopped by huge chains
+that hung from tree to tree. High into the trees went the chains
+above their heads where they sat their horses, and a chain ran
+every six inches down to the very ground: the road was well
+blocked.
+
+Rodriguez and Alderon hastily consulted; then, leaving the horses
+with Morano, they followed the chains through dense forest to find
+a place where they could get the horses through. Finding the
+chains go on and on and on, and as evening was drawing in, the two
+friends divided, Alderon going back and Rodriguez on, agreeing to
+meet again on the path where Morano was.
+
+It was darkening when they met there, Rodriguez having found
+nothing but that iron barrier going on from trunk to trunk, and
+Alderon having found a great gateway of iron; but it was shut.
+Through the silent shadows stealing abroad at evening the three
+men crashed their way on foot, leading their horses, towards this
+gate; but their way was slow and difficult for no path at all led
+up to it. It was dark when they reached it and they saw the high
+gate in the night, a black barrier among the trees where no one
+would wish to come, and in forest that seemed to these three to be
+nearly impenetrable. And what astonished Rodriguez most of all was
+that the chains had not been across the path when he had feasted
+with the green bowmen.
+
+They stood there gazing, all three, at the dark locked gate, and
+then they saw two shields that met in the midst of it, and
+Rodriguez mounted his horse and stretched up to feel what device
+there was on the beaten iron; and both the shields were blank.
+
+There they camped as well as men can when darkness has fallen
+before they reach their camping-ground; and Morano lit a great
+fire before the gate, and the smooth blank shields touching
+shoulders there up above them shone on Rodriguez and Alderon in
+the firelight. For a while they wondered at that strange gate that
+stood there dividing the wilderness; and then sleep came.
+
+As soon as they woke they called loudly, but no one guarded that
+gate, no step but theirs stirred in the forest. Then, leaving
+Morano in the camp with its great gate that led nowhere, the two
+young men climbed up by branches and chains, and were soon on the
+other side of the gate and pressing on through the silence of the
+forest to find the cottage in which Rodriguez had slept. And
+almost at once the green bowmen appeared, ten of them with their
+bows, in front of Rodriguez and Alderon. "Stop," said the ten
+green bowmen. When the bowmen said that, there was nothing else to
+do.
+
+"What do you seek?" said the bowmen.
+
+"The King of Shadow Valley," answered Rodriguez.
+
+"He is not here," they said.
+
+"Where is he?" asked Rodriguez.
+
+"He is nowhere," said one, "when he does not wish to be seen."
+
+"Then show me the castle that he promised me," said Rodriguez.
+
+"We know nothing of any castle," said one of the bowmen, and they
+all shook their heads.
+
+"No castle?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"No," they said.
+
+"Has the King of Shadow Valley no castle?" he asked, beginning now
+to despair.
+
+"We know of none," they said. "He lives in the forest."
+
+Before Rodriguez quite despaired he asked each one if they knew
+not of any castle of which their King was possessed; and each of
+them said that there was no castle in all Shadow Valley. The ten
+still stood in front of them with their bows: and Rodriguez turned
+away then indeed in despair, and walked slowly back to the camp,
+and Alderon walked behind him. In silence they reached their camp
+by the great gate that led nowhere, and there Rodriguez sat down
+on a log beside the dwindling fire, gazing at the grey ashes and
+thinking of his dead hopes. He had not the heart to speak to
+Alderon, and the silence was unbroken by Morano who, for all his
+loquacity, knew when his words were not welcome. Don Alderon tried
+to break that melancholy silence, saying that these ten bowmen did
+not know the whole world; but he could not cheer Rodriguez. For,
+sitting there in dejection on his log, thinking of all the
+assurance with which he had often spoken of his castle, there was
+one more thing to trouble him than Don Alderon knew. And this was
+that when the bowmen had appeared he had hung once more round his
+neck that golden badge that was worked for him by the King of
+Shadow Valley; and they must have seen it, and they had paid no
+heed to it whatever: its magic was wholly departed. And one thing
+troubled him that Rodriguez did not know, a very potent factor in
+human sorrow: he had left in the morning so eagerly that he had
+had no breakfast, and this he entirely forgot and knew not how
+much of his dejection came from this cause, thinking that the loss
+of his castle was of itself enough.
+
+So with downcast head he sat empty and hopeless, and the little
+camp was silent.
+
+In this mournful atmosphere while no one spoke, and no one seemed
+to watch, stood, when at last Rodriguez raised his head, with
+folded arms before the gate to nowhere, the King of Shadow Valley.
+His face was surly, as though the face of a ghost, called from
+important work among asteroids needing his care, by the trivial
+legerdemain of some foolish novice. Rodriguez, looking into those
+angry eyes, wholly forgot it was he that had a grievance. The
+silence continued. And then the King of Shadow Valley spoke.
+
+"When have I broken my word?" he said.
+
+Rodriguez did not know. The man was still looking at him, still
+standing there with folded arms before the great gate, confronting
+him, demanding some kind of answer: and Rodriguez had nothing to
+say.
+
+"I came because you promised me the castle," he said at last.
+
+"I did not bid you come here," the man with the folded arms
+answered.
+
+"I went where you bade me," said Rodriguez, "and you were not
+there."
+
+"In four weeks, I said," answered the King angrily.
+
+And then Alderon spoke. "Have you any castle for my friend?" he
+said.
+
+"No," said the King of Shadow Valley.
+
+"You promised him one," said Don Alderon.
+
+The King of Shadow Valley raised with his left hand a horn that
+hung below his elbow by a green cord round his body. He made no
+answer to Don Alderon, but put the horn against his lips and blew.
+They watched him all three in silence, till the silence was broken
+by many men moving swiftly through covert, and the green bowmen
+appeared.
+
+When seven or eight were there he turned and looked at them. "When
+have I broken my word?" he said to his men.
+
+And they all answered him, "Never!"
+
+More broke into sight through the bushes.
+
+"Ask them" he said. And Rodriguez did not speak.
+
+"Ask them," he said again, "when I have broken my word."
+
+Still Rodriguez and Alderon said nothing. And the bowmen answered
+them. "He has never broken his word," every bowman said.
+
+"You promised me a castle," said Rodriguez, seeing that man's
+fierce eyes upon him still.
+
+"Then do as I bid you," answered the King of Shadow Valley; and he
+turned round and touched the lock of the gates with some key that
+he had. The gates moved open and the King went through.
+
+Don Alderon ran forward after him, and caught up with him as he
+strode away, and spoke to him, and the King answered. Rodriguez
+did not hear what they said, and never afterwards knew. These
+words he heard only, from the King of Shadow Valley as he and Don
+Alderon parted: ".... and therefore, senor, it were better for
+some holy man to do his blessed work before we come." And the King
+of Shadow Valley passed into the deeps of the wood.
+
+As the great gates were slowly swinging to, Don Alderon came back
+thoughtfully. The gates clanged, clicked, and were shut again. The
+King of Shadow Valley and all his bowmen were gone.
+
+Don Alderon went to his horse, and Rodriguez and Morano did the
+same, drawn by the act of the only man of the three that seemed to
+have made up his mind. Don Alderon led his horse back toward the
+path, and Rodriguez followed with his. When they came to the path
+they mounted in silence; and presently Morano followed them, with
+his blankets rolled up in front of him on his horse and his
+frying-pan slung behind him.
+
+"Which way?" said Rodriguez.
+
+"Home," said Don Alderon.
+
+"But I cannot go to your home," said Rodriguez.
+
+"Come," said Don Alderon, as one whose plans were made. Rodriguez
+without a home, without plans, without hope, went with Don Alderon
+as thistledown goes with the warm wind. They rode through the
+forest till it grew all so dim that only a faint tinge of
+greenness lay on the dark leaves: above were patches of bluish sky
+like broken pieces of steel. And a star or two were out when they
+left the forest. And cantering on they came to Lowlight when the
+Milky Way appeared.
+
+And there were Dona Mirana and Serafina in the hall to greet them
+as they entered the door.
+
+"What news?" they asked.
+
+But Rodriguez hung back; he had no news to give. It was Don
+Alderon that went forward, speaking cheerily to Serafina, and
+afterwards to his mother, with whom he spoke long and anxiously,
+pointing toward the forest sometimes, almost, as Rodriguez
+thought, in fear.
+
+And a little later, when the ladies had retired, Don Alderon told
+Rodriguez over the wine, with which he had tried to cheer his
+forlorn companion, that it was arranged that he should marry
+Serafina. And when Rodriguez lamented that this was impossible he
+replied that the King of Shadow Valley wished it. And when
+Rodriguez heard this his astonishment equalled his happiness, for
+he marvelled that Don Alderon should not only believe that strange
+man's unsupported promise, but that he should even obey him as
+though he held him in awe.
+
+And on the next day Rodriguez spoke with Dona Mirana as they
+walked in the glory of the garden. And Dona Mirana gave him her
+consent as Don Alderon had done: and when Rodriguez spoke humbly
+of postponement she glanced uneasily towards Shadow Valley, as
+though she too feared the strange man who ruled over the forest
+which she had never entered.
+
+And so it was that Rodriguez walked with his lady, with the sweet
+Serafina in that garden again. And walking there they forgot the
+need of house or land, forgot Shadow Valley with its hopes and its
+doubts, and all the anxieties of the thoughts that we take for the
+morrow: and when evening came and the birds sang in azaleas, and
+the shadows grew solemn and long, and winds blew cool from the
+blazing bed of the Sun, into the garden now all strange and still,
+they forgot our Earth and, beyond the mundane coasts, drifted on
+dreams of their own into aureate regions of twilight, to wander in
+lands wherein lovers walk briefly and only once.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TWELFTH CHRONICLE
+
+THE BUILDING OF CASTLE RODRIGUEZ AND THE ENDING OF THESE
+CHRONICLES
+
+
+When the King of Shadow Valley met Rodriguez, for the first time
+in the forest, and gave him his promise and left him by his camp-
+fire, he went back some way towards the bowmen's cottage and blew
+his horn; and his hundred bowmen were about him almost at once. To
+these he gave their orders and they went back, whence they had
+come, into the forest's darkness. But he went to the bowmen's
+cottage and paced before it, a dark and lonely figure of the
+night; and wherever he paced the ground he marked it with small
+sticks. And next morning the hundred bowmen came with axes as soon
+as the earliest light had entered the forest, and each of them
+chose out one of the giant trees that stood before the cottage,
+and attacked it. All day they swung their axes against the
+forest's elders, of which nearly a hundred were fallen when
+evening came. And the stoutest of these, great trunks that were
+four feet through, were dragged by horses to the bowmen's cottage
+and laid by the little sticks that the King of Shadow Valley had
+put overnight in the ground. The bowmen's cottage and the kitchen
+that was in the wood behind it, and a few trees that still stood,
+were now all enclosed by four lines of fallen trees which made a
+large rectangle on the ground with a small square at each of its
+corners. And craftsmen came, and smoothed and hollowed the inner
+sides of the four rows of trees, working far into the night. So
+was the first day's work accomplished and so was built the first
+layer of the walls of Castle Rodriguez.
+
+On the next day the bowmen again felled a hundred trees; the top
+of the first layer was cut flat by carpenters; at evening the
+second layer was hoisted up after their under sides had been
+flattened to fit the layer below them; quantities more were cast
+in to make the floor when they had been gradually smoothed and
+fitted: at the end of the second day a man could not see over the
+walls of Castle Rodriguez. And on the third day more craftsmen
+arrived, men from distant villages at the forest's edge, whence
+the King of Shadow Valley had summoned them; and they carved the
+walls as they grew. And a hundred trees fell that day, and the
+castle was another layer higher. And all the while a park was
+growing in the forest, as they felled the great trees; but the
+greatest trees of all the bowmen spared, oaks that had stood there
+for ages and ages of men; they left them to grip the earth for a
+while longer, for a few more human generations.
+
+On the fourth day the two windows at the back of the bowmen's
+cottage began to darken, and that evening Castle Rodriguez was
+fifteen feet high. And still the hundred bowmen hewed at the
+forest, bringing sunlight bright on to grass that was shadowed by
+oaks for ages. And at the end of the fifth day they began to roof
+the lower rooms and make their second floor: and still the castle
+grew a layer a day, though the second storey they built with
+thinner trees that were only three feet through, which were more
+easily carried to their place by the pulleys. And now they began
+to heap up rocks in a mass of mortar against the wall on the
+outside, till a steep slope guarded the whole of the lower part of
+the castle against fire from any attacker if war should come that
+way, in any of the centuries that were yet to be: and the deep
+windows they guarded with bars of iron.
+
+The shape of the castle showed itself clearly now, rising on each
+side of the bowmen's cottage and behind it, with a tower at each
+of its corners. To the left of the old cottage the main doorway
+opened to the great hall, in which a pile of a few huge oaks was
+being transformed into a massive stair. Three figures of strange
+men held up this ceiling with their heads and uplifted hands, when
+the castle was finished; but as yet the carvers had only begun
+their work, so that only here and there an eye peeped out, or a
+smile flickered, to give any expression to the curious faces of
+these fabulous creatures of the wood, which were slowly taking
+their shape out of three trees whose roots were still in the earth
+below the floor. In an upper storey one of these trees became a
+tall cupboard; and the shelves and the sides and the back and the
+top of it were all one piece of oak.
+
+All the interior of the castle was of wood, hollowed into alcoves
+and polished, or carved into figures leaning out from the walls.
+So vast were the timbers that the walls, at a glance, seemed
+almost one piece of wood. And the centuries that were coming to
+Spain darkened the walls as they came, through autumnal shades
+until they were all black, as though they all mourned in secret
+for lost generations; but they have not yet crumbled.
+
+The fireplaces they made with great square red tiles, which they
+also put in the chimneys amongst rude masses of mortar: and these
+great dark holes remained always mysterious to those that looked
+for mystery in the family that whiled away the ages in that
+castle. And by every fireplace two queer carved creatures stood
+upholding the mantlepiece, with mystery in their faces and curious
+limbs, uniting the hearth with fable and with tales told in the
+wood. Years after the men that carved them were all dust the
+shadows of these creatures would come out and dance in the room,
+on wintry nights when all the lamps were gone and flames stole out
+and flickered above the smouldering logs.
+
+In the second storey one great saloon ran all the length of the
+castle. In it was a long table with eight legs that had carvings
+of roses rambling along its edges: the table and its legs were all
+of one piece with the floor. They would never have hollowed the
+great trunk in time had they not used fire. The second storey was
+barely complete on the day that Rodriguez and Don Alderon and
+Morano came to the chains that guarded the park. And the King of
+Shadow Valley would not permit his gift to be seen in anything
+less than its full magnificence, and had commanded that no man in
+the world might enter to see the work of his bowmen and craftsmen
+until it should frown at all comers a castle formidable as any in
+Spain.
+
+And then they heaped up the mortar and rock to the top of the
+second storey, but above that they let the timbers show, except
+where they filled in plaster between the curving trunks: and the
+ages blackened the timber in amongst the white plaster; but not a
+storm that blew in all the years that came, nor the moss of so
+many Springs, ever rotted away those beams that the forest had
+given and on which the bowmen had laboured so long ago. But the
+castle weathered the ages and reached our days, worn, battered
+even, by its journey through the long and sometimes troubled
+years, but splendid with the traffic that it had with history in
+many gorgeous periods. Here Valdar the Excellent came once in his
+youth. And Charles the Magnificent stayed a night in this castle
+when on a pilgrimage to a holy place of the South.
+
+It was here that Peter the Arrogant in his cups gave Africa, one
+Spring night, to his sister's son. What grandeurs this castle has
+seen! What chronicles could be writ of it! But not these
+chronicles, for they draw near their close, and they have yet to
+tell how the castle was built. Others shall tell what banners flew
+from all four of its towers, adding a splendour to the wind, and
+for what cause they flew. I have yet to tell of their building.
+
+The second storey was roofed, and Castle Rodriguez still rose one
+layer day by day, with a hauling at pulleys and the work of a
+hundred men: and all the while the park swept farther into the
+forest.
+
+And the trees that grew up through the building were worked by the
+craftsmen in every chamber into which they grew: and a great
+branch of the hugest of them made a little crooked stair in an
+upper storey. On the floors they laid down skins of beasts that
+the bowmen slew in the forest; and on the walls there hung all
+manner of leather, tooled and dyed as they had the art to do in
+that far-away period in Spain.
+
+When the third storey was finished they roofed the castle over,
+laying upon the huge rafters red tiles that they made of clay. But
+the towers were not yet finished.
+
+At this time the King of Shadow Valley sent a runner into Lowlight
+to shoot a blunt arrow with a message tied to it into Don
+Alderon's garden, near to the door, at evening.
+
+And they went on building the towers above the height of the roof
+And near the top of them they made homes for archers, little
+turrets that leaned like swallows' nests out from each tower, high
+places where they could see and shoot and not be seen from below.
+And little narrow passages wound away behind perched battlements
+of stone, by which archers could slip from place to place, and
+shoot from here or from there and never be known. So were built in
+that distant age the towers of Castle Rodriguez.
+
+And one day four weeks from the felling of the first oak, the
+period of his promise being accomplished, the King of Shadow
+Valley blew his horn. And standing by what had been the bowmen's
+cottage, now all shut in by sheer walls of Castle Rodriguez, he
+gathered his bowmen to him. And when they were all about him he
+gave them their orders. They were to go by stealth to the village
+of Lowlight, and were to be by daylight before the house of Don
+Alderon; and, whether wed or unwed, whether she fled or folk
+defended the house, to bring Dona Serafina of the Valley of
+Dawnlight to be the chatelaine of Castle Rodriguez.
+
+For this purpose he bade them take with them a chariot that he
+thought magnificent, though the mighty timbers that gave grandeur
+to Castle Rodriguez had a cumbrous look in the heavy vehicle that
+was to the bowmen's eyes the triumphal car of the forest. So they
+took their bows and obeyed, leaving the craftsmen at their work in
+the castle, which was now quite roofed over, towers and all. They
+went through the forest by little paths that they knew, going
+swiftly and warily in the bowmen's way: and just before nightfall
+they were at the forest's edge, though they went no farther from
+it than its shadows go in the evening. And there they rested under
+the oak trees for the early part of the night except those whose
+art it was to gather news for their king; and three of those went
+into Lowlight and mixed with the villagers there.
+
+When white mists moved over the fields near dawn and wavered
+ghostly about Lowlight, the green bowman moved with them. And just
+out of hearing of the village, behind wild shrubs that hid them,
+the bowmen that were coming from the forest met the three that had
+spent the night in taverns of Lowlight. And the three told the
+hundred of the great wedding that there was to be in the Church of
+the Renunciation that morning in Lowlight: and of the preparations
+that were made, and how holy men had come from far on mules, and
+had slept the night in the village, and the Bishop of Toledo
+himself would bless the bridegroom's sword. The bowmen therefore
+retired a little way and, moving through the mists, came forward
+to points whence they could watch the church, well concealed on
+the wild plain, which here and there gave up a field to man but
+was mostly the playground of wild creatures whose ways were the
+bowmen's ways. And here they waited.
+
+This was the wedding of Rodriguez and Serafina, of which gossips
+often spoke at their doors in summer evenings, old women mumbling
+of fair weddings that each had seen; and they had been children
+when they saw this wedding; they were those that threw small
+handfuls of anemones on the path before the porch. They told the
+tale of it till they could tell no more. It is the account of the
+last two or three of them, old, old women, that came at last to
+these chronicles, so that their tongues may wag as it were a
+little longer through these pages although they have been for so
+many centuries dead. And this is all that books are able to do.
+
+First there was bell-ringing and many voices, and then the voices
+hushed, and there came the procession of eight divines of Murcia,
+whose vestments were strange to Lowlight. Then there came a priest
+from the South, near the border of Andalusia, who overnight had
+sanctified the ring. (It was he who had entertained Rodriguez when
+he first escaped from la Garda, and Rodriguez had sent for him
+now.) Each note of the bells came clear through the hush as they
+entered the church. And then with suitable attendants the bishop
+strode by and they saw quite close the blessed cope of Toledo. And
+the bridegroom followed him in, wearing his sword, and Don Alderon
+went with him. And then the voices rose again in the street: the
+bells rang on: they all saw Dona Mirana. The little bunches of
+bright anemones grew sticky in their hands: the bells seemed
+louder: cheering rose in the street and came all down it nearer.
+Then Dona Serafina walked past them with all her maids: and that
+is what the gossips chiefly remembered, telling how she smiled at
+them, and praising her dress, through those distant summer
+evenings. Then there was music in the church. And afterwards the
+forest-people had come. And the people screamed, for none knew
+what they would do. But they bowed so low to the bride and
+bridegroom, and showed their great hunting bows so willingly to
+all who wished to see, that the people lost their alarm and only
+feared lest the Bishop of Toledo should blast the merry bowmen
+with one of his curses.
+
+And presently the bride and bridegroom entered the chariot, and
+the people cheered; and there were farewells and the casting of
+flowers; and the bishop blessed three of their bows; and a fat man
+sat beside the driver with folded arms, wearing bright on his face
+a look of foolish contentment; and the bowmen and bride and
+bridegroom all went away to the forest.
+
+Four huge white horses drew that bridal chariot, the bowmen ran
+beside it, and soon it was lost to sight of the girls that watched
+it from Lowlight; but their memories held it close till their eyes
+could no longer see to knit and they could only sit by their
+porches in fine weather and talk of the days that were.
+
+So came Rodriguez and his bride to the forest; he silent,
+perplexed, wondering always to what home and what future he
+brought her; she knowing less than he and trusting more. And on
+the untended road that the bowmen shared with stags and with rare,
+very venturous travellers, the wheels of the woodland chariot sank
+so deep in the sandy earth that the escort of bowmen needed seldom
+to run any more; and he who sat by the driver climbed down and
+walked silent for once, perhaps awed by the occasion, though he
+was none other than Morano. Serafina was delighted with the
+forest, but between Rodriguez and its beautiful grandeur his
+anxieties crowded thickly. He leaned over once from the chariot
+and asked one of the bowmen again about that castle; but the
+bowman only bowed and answered with a proverb of Spain, not easily
+carried so far from its own soil to thrive in our language, but
+signifying that the morrow showeth all things. He was silent then,
+for he knew that there was no way to a direct answer through those
+proverbs, and after a while perhaps there came to him some of
+Serafma's trustfulness. By evening they came to a wide avenue
+leading to great gates.
+
+Rodriguez did not know the avenue, he knew no paths so wide in
+Shadow Valley; but he knew those gates. They were the gates of
+iron that led nowhere. But now an avenue went from them upon the
+other side, and opened widely into a park dotted with clumps of
+trees. And the two great iron shields, they too had changed with
+the changes that had bewitched the forest, for their surfaces that
+had glowed so unmistakably blank, side by side in the firelight,
+not many nights before, blazoned now the armorial bearings of
+Rodriguez upon the one and those of the house of Dawnlight upon
+the other. Through the opened gates they entered the young park
+that seemed to wonder at its own ancient trees, where wild deer
+drifted away from them like shadows through the evening: for the
+bowmen had driven in deer for miles through the forest. They
+passed a pool where water-lilies lay in languid beauty for
+hundreds of summers, but as yet no flower peeped into the water,
+for the pond was all hallowed newly.
+
+A clump of trees stood right ahead of their way; they passed round
+it; and Castle Rodriguez came all at once into view. Serafina
+gasped joyously. Rodriguez saw its towers, its turrets for
+archers, its guarded windows deep in the mass of stone, its solemn
+row of battlements, but he did not believe what he saw. He did not
+believe that here at last was his castle, that here was his dream
+fulfilled and his journey done. He expected to wake suddenly in
+the cold in some lonely camp, he expected the Ebro to unfold its
+coils in the North and to come and sweep it away. It was but
+another strayed hope, he thought, taking the form of dream. But
+Castle Rodriguez still stood frowning there, and none of its
+towers vanished, or changed as things change in dreams; but the
+servants of the King of Shadow Valley opened the great door, and
+Serafina and Rodriguez entered, and all the hundred bowmen
+disappeared.
+
+Here we will leave them, and let these Chronicles end. For whoever
+would tell more of Castle Rodriguez must wield one of those
+ponderous pens that hangs on the study wall in the house of
+historians. Great days in the story of Spain shone on those iron-
+barred windows, and things were said in its banqueting chamber and
+planned in its inner rooms that sometimes turned that story this
+way or that, as rocks turn a young river. And as a traveller meets
+a mighty river at one of its bends, and passes on his path, while
+the river sweeps on to its estuary and the sea, so I leave the
+triumphs and troubles of that story which I touched for one moment
+by the door of Castle Rodriguez.
+
+My concern is but with Rodriguez and Serafina and to tell that
+they lived here in happiness; and to tell that the humble Morano
+found his happiness too. For he became the magnificent steward of
+Castle Rodriguez, the majordomo, and upon august occasions he
+wore as much red plush as he had ever seen in his dreams, when he
+saw this very event, sleeping by dying camp-fires. And he slept
+not upon straw but upon good heaps of wolf-skins. But pining a
+little in the second year of his somewhat lonely splendour, he
+married one of the maidens of the forest, the child of a bowman
+that hunted boars with their king. And all the green bowmen came
+and built him a house by the gates of the park, whence he walked
+solemnly on proper occasions to wait upon his master. Morano,
+good, faithful man, come forward for but a moment out of the
+Golden Age and bow across all those centuries to the reader: say
+one farewell to him in your Spanish tongue, though the sound of it
+be no louder than the sound of shadows moving, and so back to the
+dim splendour of the past, for the Senor or Senora shall hear your
+name no more.
+
+For years Rodriguez lived a chieftain of the forest, owning the
+overlordship of the King of Shadow Valley, whom he and Serafina
+would entertain with all the magnificence of which their castle
+was capable on such occasions as he appeared before the iron
+gates. They seldom saw him. Sometimes they heard his horn as he
+went by. They heard his bowmen follow. And all would pass and
+perhaps they would see none. But upon occasions he came. He came
+to the christening of the eldest son of Rodriguez and Serafina,
+for whom he was godfather. He came again to see the boy shoot for
+the first time with a bow. And later he came to give little
+presents, small treasures of the forest, to Rodriguez' daughters;
+who treated him always, not as sole lord of that forest that
+travellers dreaded, but as a friend of their very own that they
+had found for themselves. He had his favourites among them and
+none quite knew which they were.
+
+And one day he came in his old age to give Rodriguez a message.
+And he spoke long and tenderly of the forest as though all its
+glades were sacred.
+
+And soon after that day he died, and was buried with the mourning
+of all his men in the deeps of Shadow Valley, where only Rodriguez
+and the bowmen knew. And Rodriguez became, as the old king had
+commanded, the ruler of Shadow Valley and all its faithful men.
+With them he hunted and defended the forest, holding all its ways
+to be sacred, as the old king had taught. It is told how Rodriguez
+ruled the forest well.
+
+And later he made a treaty with the Spanish King acknowledging him
+sole Lord of Spain, including Shadow Valley, saving that certain
+right should pertain to the foresters and should be theirs for
+ever. And these rights are written on parchment and sealed with
+the seal of Spain; and none may harm the forest without the
+bowmen's leave.
+
+Rodriguez was made Duke of Shadow Valley and a Magnifico of the
+first degree; though little he went with other hidalgos to Court,
+but lived with his family in Shadow Valley, travelling seldom
+beyond the splendour of the forest farther than Lowlight.
+
+Thus he saw the glory of autumn turning the woods to fairyland:
+and when the stags were roaring and winter coming on he would take
+a boar-spear down from the wall and go hunting through the forest,
+whose twigs were black and slender and still against the bright
+menace of winter. Spring found him viewing the fields that his men
+had sown, along the forest's edge, and finding in the chaunt of
+the myriad birds a stirring of memories, a beckoning towards past
+days. In summer he would see his boys and girls at play, running
+through shafts of sunlight that made leaves and grass like pale
+emeralds. He gave his days to the forest and the four seasons.
+Thus he dwelt amidst splendours such as History has never seen in
+any visit of hers to the courts of men.
+
+Of him and Serafina it has been written and sung that they lived
+happily ever after; and though they are now so many centuries
+dead, may they have in the memories of such of my readers as will
+let them linger there, that afterglow of life that remembrance
+gives, which is all that there is on earth for those that walked
+it once and that walk the paths of their old haunts no more.
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Don Rodriguez
+by Lord Dunsany
+