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 f