“Well?” said Rodriguez, for Morano was hesitating.

“He likes your mandolin no better, master.”

Rodriguez resented a slight to his mandolin as much as a slight to his sword, but he smiled as he looked at Morano’s anxious face.

“He would kill you for your mandolin,” Morano went on eagerly, “as he would kill me for my frying-pan.”

And at the mention of that frying-pan Rodriguez frowned, although it had given him many a good meal since the night it offended in Lowlight.  And he would sooner have gone to the wars without a sword than under the balcony of his heart’s desire without a mandolin.

So Rodriguez would hear no more of Morano’s request; and soon he left the fire and went to lie down; but Morano sighed and sat gazing on into the embers unhappily; while thoughts plodded slow through his mind, leading to nothing.  Late that night he threw fresh logs on the camp-fire, so that when they awoke there was still fire in the embers And when they had eaten their breakfast Rodriguez said farewell to Morano, saying that he had business in Lowlight that might keep him a few days.  But Morano said not farewell then, for he would follow his master as far as the midday halt to cook his next meal.  And when noon came they were beyond the forest.

Once more Morano cooked bacon.  Then while Rodriguez slept Morano took his cloak and did all that could be done by brushing and smoothing to give back to it that air that it some time had, before it had flapped upon so many winds and wrapped Rodriguez on such various beds, and met the vicissitudes that make this story.

For the plume he could do little.

And his master awoke, late in the afternoon, and went to his horse and gave Morano his orders.  He was to go back with two of the horses to their last camp in the forest and take with him all their kit except one blanket and make himself comfortable there and wait till Rodriguez came.

And then Rodriguez rode slowly away, and Morano stood gazing mournfully and warningly at the mandolin; and the warnings were not lost upon Rodriguez, though he would never admit that he saw in Morano’s staring eyes any wise hint that he heeded.

And Morano sighed, and went and untethered his horses; and soon he was riding lonely back to the forest.  And Rodriguez taking the other way saw at once the towers of Lowlight.

Does my reader think that he then set spurs to his horse, galloping towards that house about whose balcony his dreams flew every night?  No, it was far from evening; far yet from the colour and calm in which the light with never a whisper says farewell to Earth, but with a gesture that the horizon hides takes silent leave of the fields on which she has danced with joy; far yet from the hour that shone for Serafina like a great halo round her and round her mother’s house.

We cannot believe that one hour more than another shone upon Serafina, or that the dim end of the evening was only hers:  but these are the Chronicles of Rodriguez, who of all the things that befell him treasured most his memory of Serafina in the twilight, and who held that this hour was hers as much as her raiment and her balcony:  such therefore it is in these chronicles.