And Rodriguez played no tune he had ever known, nor any airs that he had heard men play in lanes in Andalusia; but he told of things that he knew not, of sadnesses that he had scarcely felt and undreamed exaltations.  It was the hour of need, and the mandolin knew.

And when all was told that the mandolin can tell of whatever is wistfulest in the spirit of man, a mood of merriment entered its old curved sides and there came from its hollows a measure such as they dance to when laughter goes over the greens in Spain.  Never a song sang Rodriguez; the mandolin said all.

And what message did Serafina receive from those notes that were strange even to Rodriguez?  Were they not stranger to her?  I have said that spirits blown far out of their course and nearing the mundane coasts hear mortal music sometimes, and hearing understand.  And if they cannot understand those snatches of song, all about mortal things and human needs, that are wafted rarely to them by chance passions, how much more surely a young mortal heart, so near Rodriguez, heard what he would say and understood the message however strange.

When Dona Mirana and her daughter rose, exchanging their little curtsies for the low bows of Rodriguez, and so retired for the night, the long room seemed to Rodriguez now empty of threatening omens.  The great portraits that the moon had lit, and that had frowned at him in the moonlight when he came here before, frowned at him now no longer.  The anger that he had known to lurk in the darkness on pictured faces of dead generations had gone with the gloom that it haunted:  they were all passionless now in the quiet light of the candles.  He looked again at the portraits eye to eye, remembering looks they had given him in the moonlight, and all looked back at him with ages of apathy; and he knew that whatever glimmer of former selves there lurks about portraits of the dead and gone was thinking only of their own past days in years remote from Rodriguez.  Whether their anger had flashed for a moment over the ages on that night a month from now, or whether it was only the moonlight, he never knew.  Their spirits were back now surely amongst their own days, whence they deigned not to look on the days that make these chronicles.

Not till then did Rodriguez admit, or even know, that he had not eaten since his noonday meal.  But now he admitted this to Don Alderon’s questions; and Don Alderon led him to another chamber and there regaled him with all the hospitality for which that time was famous.  And when Rodriguez had eaten, Don Alderon sent for wine, and the butler brought it in an olden flagon, dark wine of a precious vintage:  and soon the two young men were drinking together and talking of the wickedness of the Moors.  And while they talked the night grew late and chilly and still, and the hour came when moths are fewer and young men think of bed.  Then Don Alderon showed his guest to an upper room, a long room dim with red