ountains were not before them but a little to the right of their
path, until new ones appeared ahead of them like giants arising from
sleep, and then their path seemed blocked as though by a mighty wall
against which its feeble wanderings went in vain. In the end it turned
a bit to its right and went straight for a dark mountain, where a wild
track seemed to come down out of the rocks to meet it, and upon this
track looked down that sinister house. Had you been there, my reader,
you would have said, any of us had said, Why not choose some other
house? There were no other houses. He who dwelt on the edge of the
ravine that ran into that dark mountain was wholly without neighbours.

And evening came, and still they were far from the mountain.

The sun set on their left. But it was in the eastern sky that the
greater splendour was; for the low rays streaming across lit up some
stormy clouds that were brooding behind the mountain and turned their
gloomy forms to an astounding purple.

And after this their road began to rise toward the ridges. The
mountains darkened and the sinister house was about to merge with
their shadows, when he who dwelt there lit candles.

The act astonished the wayfarers. All through half the day they had
seen the house, until it seemed part of the mountains; evil it seemed
like their ridges, that were black and bleak and forbidding, and
strange it seemed with a strangeness that moved no fears they could
name, yet it seemed inactive as night.

Now lights appeared showing that someone moved. Window after window
showed to the bare dark mountain its gleaming yellow glare; there in
the night the house forsook the dark rocks that seemed kin to it, by
glowing as they could never glow, by doing what the beasts that haunted
them could not do: this was the lair of man. Here was the light of
flame but the rocks remained dark and cold as the wind of night that
went over them, he who dwelt now with the lights had forsaken the
rocks, his neighbours.

And, when all were lit, one light high in a tower shone green. These
lights appearing out of the mountain thus seemed to speak to Rodriguez
and to tell him nothing. And Morano wondered, as he seldom troubled to
do.

They pushed on up the steepening path.

"Like you the looks of it?" said Rodriguez once.

"Aye, master," answered Morano, "so there be straw."

"You see nothing strange there, then?" Rodriguez said.

"Master," Morano said, "there be saints f