When the tale of the castle and those great towers was done, the wind that blew from the snow touched all the hearers; they had seemed to be away by the bank of the Ebro in the heat and light of Spain, and now the vast night stripped them and the peaks seemed to close round on them.  They wrapped themselves in blankets and lay down in their shelters.  For a while they heard the wind waving branches and the thump of a horse’s hoof restless at night; then they all slept except one that guarded the captive, and the captive himself who long lay thinking and thinking.

Dawn stole through the wood and waked none of the sleepers; the birds all shouted at them, still they slept on; and then the captive’s guard wakened Morano and he stirred up the sparks of the fire and cooked, and they breakfasted late.  And soon they left the wood and faced the bleak slope, all of them going on foot and leading their horses.

And the track crawled on till it came to the scorn of the peaks, winding over a shoulder of the Pyrenees, where the peaks gaze cold and contemptuous away from the things of man.

In the presence of those that bore them company Rodriguez and Morano felt none of the deadly majesty of those peaks that regard so awfully over the solitudes.  They passed through them telling cheerfully of wars the four knights had known:  and descended and came by sunset to the lower edge of the snow.  They pushed on a little farther and then camped; and with branches from the last camp that they had heaped on their horses they made another great fire and, huddling round it in the blankets that they had brought, found warmth even there so far from the hearths of men.

And dawn and the cold woke them all on that treeless slope by barely warm embers.  Morano cooked again and they ate in silence.  And then the four knights rose sadly and one bowed and told Rodriguez how they must now go back to their own country.  And grief seized on Rodriguez at his words, seeing that he was to lose four old friends at once and perhaps for ever, for when men have fought under the same banner in war they become old friends on that morning.

“Senors,” said Rodriguez, “we may never meet again!”

And the other looked back to the peaks beyond which the far lands lay, and made a gesture with his hands.

“Senor, at least,” said Rodriguez, “let us camp once more together.”

And even Morano babbled a supplication.

“Methinks, senor,” he answered, “we are already across the frontier, and when we men of the sword cross frontiers misunderstandings arise, so that it is our custom never to pass across them save when we push the frontier with us, adding the lands over which we march to those of our liege lord.”

“Senors,” said Rodriguez, “the whole mountain is the frontier.  Come with us one day further.”  But they would not stay.

All the good things that could be carried they loaded on to the three horses whose heads were turned towards Spain; then turned, all four, and said farewell to the three.  And long looked each in the face of Rodriguez as he took his hand in fare well, for they had fought under the same banner and, as wayfaring was in those days, it was not likely that they would ever meet again.  They turned and went with their horses back towards the land they had fought for.