or all requirements."

Any fears he had felt about that house before, now as he neared it were
gone; it was time to put away fears and face the event; thus worked
Morano's philosophy. And he turned his thoughts to the achievements
upon earth of a certain Saint who met Satan, and showed to the
sovereign of Hell a discourtesy alien to the ways of the Church.

It was dark now, and the yellow lights got larger as they drew nearer
the windows, till they saw large shadows obscurely passing from room to
room. The ascent was steep now and the pathway stopped. No track of any
kind approached the house. It stood on a precipice-edge as though one
of the rocks of the mountain: they climbed over rocks to reach it. The
windows flickered and blinked at them.

Nothing invited them there in the look of that house, but they were now
in such a forbidding waste that shelter had to be found; they were all
among edges of rock as black as the night and hard as the material of
which Cosmos was formed, at first upon Chaos' brink. The sound of their
climbing ran noisily up the mountain but no sound came from the house:
only the shadows moved more swiftly across a room, passed into other
rooms and came hurrying back. Sometimes the shadows stayed and seemed
to peer; and when the travellers stood and watched to see what they
were they would disappear and there were no shadows at all, and the
rooms were filled instead with their wondering speculation. Then they
pushed on over rocks that seemed never trodden by man, so sharp were
they and slanting, all piled together: it seemed the last waste, to
which all shapeless rocks had been thrown.

Morano and these black rocks seemed shaped by a different scheme;
indeed the rocks had never been shaped at all, they were just raw
pieces of Chaos. Morano climbed over their edges with moans and
discomfort. Rodriguez heard him behind him and knew by his moans when
he came to the top of each sharp rock.

The rocks became savager, huger, even more sharp and more angular. They
were there in the dark in multitudes. Over these Rodriguez staggered,
and Morano clambered and tumbled; and so they came, breathing hard, to
the lonely house.

In the wall that their hands had reached there was no door, so they
felt along it till they came to the corner, and beyond the corner was
the front wall of the house. In it was the front door. But so nearly
did this door open upon the abyss that the bats that fled from their
comin