t. 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
Fern