eads 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