The mountains were not before them but a little to the right of their path, until new ones appeared ahead of them like giants arising from sleep, and then their path seemed blocked as though by a mighty wall against which its feeble wanderings went in vain.  In the end it turned a bit to its right and went straight for a dark mountain, where a wild track seemed to come down out of the rocks to meet it, and upon this track looked down that sinister house.  Had you been there, my reader, you would have said, any of us had said, Why not choose some other house?  There were no other houses.  He who dwelt on the edge of the ravine that ran into that dark mountain was wholly without neighbours.

And evening came, and still they were far from the mountain.

The sun set on their left.  But it was in the eastern sky that the greater splendour was; for the low rays streaming across lit up some stormy clouds that were brooding behind the mountain and turned their gloomy forms to an astounding purple.

And after this their road began to rise toward the ridges.  The mountains darkened and the sinister house was about to emerge with their shadows, when he who dwelt there lit candles.

The act astonished the wayfarers.  All through half the day they had seen the house, until it seemed part of the mountains; evil it seemed like their ridges, that were black and bleak and forbidding, and strange it seemed with a strangeness that moved no fears they could name, yet it seemed inactive as night.

Now lights appeared showing that someone moved.  Window after window showed to the bare dark mountain its gleaming yellow glare; there in the night the house forsook the dark rocks that seemed kin to it, by glowing as they could never glow, by doing what the beasts that haunted them could not do:  this was the lair of man.  Here was the light of flame but the rocks remained dark and cold as the wind of night that went over them, he who dwelt now with the lights had forsaken the rocks, his neighbours.

And, when all were lit, one light high in a tower shone green.  These lights appearing out of the mountain thus seemed to speak to Rodriguez and to tell him nothing.  And Morano wondered, as he seldom troubled to do.

They pushed on up the steepening path.

“Like you the looks of it?” said Rodriguez once.

“Aye, master,” answered Morano, “so there be straw.”

“You see nothing strange there, then?” Rodriguez said.

“Master,” Morano said, “there be saints for all requirements.”

Any fears he had felt about that house before, now as he neared it were gone; it was time to put away fears and face the event; thus worked Morano’s philosophy.  And he turned his thoughts to the achievements upon earth of a certain Saint who met Satan, and showed to the sovereign of Hell a discourtesy alien to the ways of the Church.

It was dark now, and the yellow lights got larger as they drew nearer the windows, till they saw large shadows obscurely passing from room to room.  The ascent was steep now and the pathway stopped.  No track of any kind approached the house.  It stood on a precipice-edge as though one of the rocks of the mountain:  they climbed over rocks to reach it.  The windows flickered and blinked at them.