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.
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