it in our Mess that I want to tell you and cannot. I've
tasted bacon there that isn't the same as what you get at the Ritz. And
I want to tell you how that bacon tastes; and I can't so I talk about
stars. But perhaps you are one of us, reader, and then you will
understand. Only why the hell don't we get back there again where the
Evening Star swings low on the wall of the Mess?

When they rose from table, when they got up from the earth, and the
frying-pan was slung on Morano's back, adding grease to the mere
surface of his coat whose texture could hold no more, they pushed on
briskly for they saw no sign of houses, unless what Rodriguez saw now
dimly above a ravine were indeed a house in the mountains.

They had walked from eight till noon without any loitering. They must
have done fifteen miles since the mountains were pale blue. And now,
every mile they went, on the most awful of the dark ridges the object
Rodriguez saw seemed more and more like a house. Yet neither then, nor
as they drew still nearer, nor when they saw it close, nor looking back
on it after years, did it somehow seem quite right. And Morano
sometimes crossed himself as he looked at it, and said nothing.

Rodriguez, as they walked ceaselessly through the afternoon, seeing his
servant show some sign of weariness, which comes not to youth, pointed
out the house looking nearer than it really was on the mountain, and
told him that he should find there straw, and they would sup and stay
the night. Afterwards, when the strange appearance of the house,
varying with different angles, filled him with curious forebodings,
Rodriguez would make no admission to his servant, but held to the plan
he had announced, and so approached the queer roofs, neglecting the
friendly stars.

Through the afternoon the two travellers pushed on mostly in silence,
for the glances that house seemed to give him from the edge of its
perilous ridge, had driven the mirth from Rodriguez and had even
checked the garrulity on the lips of the tougher Morano, if garrulity
can be ascribed to him whose words seldom welled up unless some simple
philosophy troubled his deeps. The house seemed indeed to glance at
him, for as their road wound on, the house showed different aspects,
different walls and edges of walls, and different curious roofs; all
these walls seemed to peer at him. One after another they peered, new
ones glided imperceptibly into sight as though to say, We see too.

The m