tood silent, while Rodriguez hung the reins of his horse
over the broken branch of a tree. And then Don Alderon rode into the
wood.

All then that was most pathetic in Morano's sense of injustice looked
out of his eyes as he turned them upon his master. But Don Alderon
scarcely glanced at all at Morano, even when he handed to him the reins
of his horse as he walked on towards Rodriguez.

And there in that leafy place they rested all through the evening, for
they had not started so early upon their journey as travellers should.
Eight days had gone since Rodriguez had left that small camp to ride to
Lowlight, and to the apex of his life towards which all his days had
ascended; and in that time Morano had collected good store of wood and,
in little ways unthought of by dwellers in cities, had made the place
like such homes as wanderers find. Don Alderon was charmed with their
roof of towering greenness, and with the choirs of those which
inhabited it and which were now all coming home to sing. And at some
moment in the twilight, neither Rodriguez nor Alderon noticed when,
Morano repossessed himself of his frying-pan, unbidden by Rodriguez,
but acting on a certain tacit permission that there seemed to be in the
twilight or in the mood of the two young men as they sat by the fire.
And soon he was cooking once more, at a fire of his own, with something
of the air that you see upon a Field Marshal's face who has lost his
baton and found it again. Have you ever noticed it, reader?

And when the meal was ready Morano served it in silence, moving
unobtrusively in the gloom of the wood; for he knew that he was
forgiven, yet not so openly that he wished to insist on his presence or
even to imply his possession of the weapon that fried the bacon. So,
like a dryad he moved from tree to tree, and like any fabulous creature
was gone again. And the two young men supped well, and sat on and on,
watching the sparks go up on innumerable journeys from the fire at
which they sat, to be lost to sight in huge wastes of blackness and
stars, lost to sight utterly, lost like the spirit of man to the gaze
of our wonder when we try to follow its journey beyond the hearths that
we know.

All the next day they rode on through the forest, till they came to the
black circle of the old fire of their next camp. And here Rodriguez
halted on account of the attraction that one of his old camps seems to
have for a wanderer. It drew his feet towards it, t