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 br