Rodriguez overtook the shade he had lost and lay there resting until Morano awoke, driven all at once from sleep by a dream or by mere choking.  Then from the intricacies of his clothing, which to him after those two days was what home is to some far wanderer, Morano drew out once more a lump of bacon.  Then came the fry-pan and then a fire:  it was the Wanderers’ Mess.  That mess-room has stood in many lands and has only one roof.  We are proud of that roof, all we who belong to that Mess.  We boast of it when we show it to our friends when it is all set out at night.  It has Aldebaran in it, the Bear and Orion, and at the other end the Southern Cross.  Yes we are proud of our roof when it is at its best.

What am I saying?  I should be talking of bacon.  Yes, but there is a way of cooking it in our Mess that I want to tell you and cannot.  I’ve tasted bacon there that isn’t the same as what you get at the Ritz.  And I want to tell you how that bacon tastes; and I can’t so I talk about stars.  But perhaps you are one of us, reader, and then you will understand.  Only why the hell don’t we get back there again where the Evening Star swings low on the wall of the Mess?

When they rose from table, when they got up from the earth, and the frying-pan was slung on Morano’s back, adding grease to the mere surface of his coat whose texture could hold no more, they pushed on briskly for they saw no sign of houses, unless what Rodriguez saw now dimly above a ravine were indeed a house in the mountains.

They had walked from eight till noon without any loitering.  They must have done fifteen miles since the mountains were pale blue.  And now, every mile they went, on the most awful of the dark ridges the object Rodriguez saw seemed more and more like a house.  Yet neither then, nor as they drew still nearer, nor when they saw it close, nor looking back on it after years, did it somehow seem quite right.  And Morano sometimes crossed himself as he looked at it, and said nothing.

Rodriguez, as they walked ceaselessly through the afternoon, seeing his servant show some sign of weariness, which comes not to youth, pointed out the house looking nearer than it really was on the mountain, and told him that he should find there straw, and they would sup and stay the night.  Afterwards, when the strange appearance of the house, varying with different angles, filled him with curious forebodings, Rodriguez would make no admission to his servant, but held to the plan he had announced, and so approached the queer roofs, neglecting the friendly stars.

Through the afternoon the two travellers pushed on mostly in silence, for the glances that house seemed to give him from the edge of its perilous ridge, had driven the mirth from Rodriguez and had even checked the garrulity on the lips of the tougher Morano, if garrulity can be ascribed to him whose words seldom welled up unless some simple philosophy troubled his deeps.  The house seemed indeed to glance at him, for as their road wound on, the house showed different aspects, different walls and edges of walls, and different curious roofs; all these walls seemed to peer at him.  One after another they peered, new ones glided imperceptibly into sight as though to say, We see too.