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 inhu