night. That night they both got the sleep they needed, now that there
was no captive to guard. All the next day they rode slowly in the April
weather by roads that wandered among tended fields; but a little way
off from the fields there shone low hills in the sunlight, so wild, so
free of man, that Rodriguez remembering them in later years, wondered
if their wild shrubs just hid the frontiers of fairyland.

For two days they rode by the edge of unguessable regions. Had Pan
piped there no one had marvelled, nor though fauns had scurried past
sheltering clumps of azaleas. In the twilight no tiny queens had court
within rings of toadstools: yet almost, almost they appeared.

And on the third day all at once they came to a road they knew. It was
the road by which they had ridden when Rodriguez still had his dream,
the way from Shadow Valley to the Ebro. And so they turned into the
road they knew, as wanderers always will; and, still without aim or
plan, they faced towards Shadow Valley. And in the evening of the day
that followed that, as they looked about for a camping-ground, there
came in sight the village on the hill which Rodriguez knew to be fifty
miles from the forest: it was the village in which they had rested the
first night after leaving Shadow Valley. They did not camp but went on
to the village and knocked at the door of the inn. Habit guides us all
at times, even kings are the slaves of it (though in their presence it
takes the prouder name of precedent); and here were two wanderers
without any plans at all; they were therefore defenceless in the grip
of habit and, seeing an inn they knew, they loitered up to it. Mine
host came again to the door. He cheerfully asked Rodriguez how he had
fared on his journey, but Rodriguez would say nothing. He asked for
lodging for himself and Morano and stabling for the horses: he ate and
slept and paid his due, and in the morning was gone.

Whatever impulses guided Rodriguez as he rode and Morano followed, he
knew not what they were or even that there could be any. He followed
the road without hope and only travelled to change his camping-grounds.
And that night he was half-way between the village and Shadow Valley.

Morano never spoke, for he saw that his master's disappointment was
still raw; but it pleased him to notice, as he had done all day, that
they were heading for the great forest. He cooked their evening meal in
their camp by the wayside and they both ate it in