The cheerfulness faded out of Morano’s face as light fades at sunset.  “Master,” he said, “he will surely slay me now.”

“He will not slay you,” said Rodriguez.

“Master,” Morano said, “he hopes for my fat carcase as much as men hope for the unicorn, when they wear their bright green coats and hunt him with dogs in Spring.”  I know not what legend Morano stored in his mind, nor how much of it was true.  “And when he finds me without my frying-pan he will surely slay me.”

“That senor,” said Rodriguez emphatically, “must not be hit with the frying-pan.”

“That is a hard rule, master,” said Morano.

And Rodriguez was indignant, when he heard that, that anyone should thus blaspheme against an obvious law of chivalry:  while Morano’s only thought was upon the injustice of giving up the sweets of life for the sake of a frying-pan.  Thus they were at cross-purposes.  And for some while they stood silent, while Rodriguez hung the reins of his horse over the broken branch of a tree.  And then Don Alderon rode into the wood.

All then that was most pathetic in Morano’s sense of injustice looked out of his eyes as he turned them upon his master.  But Don Alderon scarcely glanced at all at Morano, even when he handed to him the reins of his horse as he walked on towards Rodriguez.

And there in that leafy place they rested all through the evening, for they had not started so early upon their journey as travellers should.  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.