“Whose word?” said Rodriguez, looking him in the eyes.

The smoke from the fire between them was thickening greyly as though something had been cast on it.  “The word,” he said, “of the King of Shadow Valley.”

Rodriguez gazing through the increasing smoke saw not to the other side.  He rose and walked round the fire, but the strange man was gone.

Rodriguez came back to his place by the fire and sat long there in silence.  Morano was bubbling over to speak, but respected his master’s silence:  for Rodriguez was gazing into the deeps of the fire seeing pictures there that were brighter than any that he had known.  They were so clear now that they seemed almost true.  He saw Serafina’s face there looking full at him.  He watched it long until other pictures hid it, visions that had no meaning for Rodriguez.  And not till then he spoke.  And when he spoke his face was almost smiling.

“Well, Morano,” he said, “have we come by that castle at last?”

“That man does not lie, master,” he answered:  and his eyes were glittering with shrewd conviction.

“What shall we do then?” said Rodriguez.

“Let us go to some village, master,” said Morano, “until the time he said.”

“What village?” Rodriguez asked.

“I know not, master,” answered Morano, his face a puzzle of innocence and wonder; and Rodriguez fell back into thought again.  And the dancing flames calmed down to a deep, quiet glow; and soon Rodriguez stepped back a yard or two from the fire to where Morano had prepared his bed; and, watching the fire still, and turning over thoughts that flashed and changed as fast as the embers, he went to wonderful dreams that were no more strange or elusive than that valley’s wonderful king.

When he spoke in the morning the camp-fire was newly lit and there was a smell of bacon; and Morano, out of breath and puzzled, was calling to him.

“Master,” he said, “I was mistaken about those horses.”

“Mistaken?” said Rodriguez.

“They were just as I left them, master, all tied to the tree with my knots.”

Rodriguez left it at that.  Morano could make mistakes and the forest was full of wonders:  anything might happen.  “We will ride,” he said.

Morano’s breakfast was as good as ever; and, when he had packed up those few belongings that make a dwelling-place of any chance spot in the wilderness, they mounted the horses, which were surely there, and rode away through sunlight and green leaves.  They rode slow, for the branches were low over the path, and whoever canters in a forest and closes his eyes against a branch has to consider whether he will open them to be whipped by the next branch or close them till he bumps his head into a tree.  And it suited Rodriguez to loiter, for he thought thus to meet the King of Shadow Valley again or his green bowmen and learn the answers to innumerable questions about his castle which were wandering through his mind.