an innuendo here, a foolish fact there, they know how to do it, and not a soul will suspect the goddess of personal malice or the great historian of pique.  Rodriguez gazed then through the deep blue window, forgetful of all around, on battles that had not all the elegance or neatness of which our histories so tidily tell.  And as he gazed upon a merry encounter between two men on the fringe of an ancient fight he felt a touch on his shoulder and then almost a tug, and turning round beheld the room he was in.  How long he had been absent from it in thought he did not know, but the Professor was still standing with folded arms where he had left him, probably well satisfied with the wonder that his most secret art had awakened in his guest.  It was Morano who touched his shoulder, unable to hold back any longer his impatience to see the wars; his eyes as Rodriguez turned round were gazing at his master with dog-like wistfulness.

The absurd eagerness of Morano, his uncouth touch on his shoulder, seemed only pathetic to Rodriguez.  He looked at the Professor’s face, the nose like a hawk’s beak, the small eyes deep down beside it, dark of hue and dreadfully bright, the silent lips.  He stood there uttering no actual prohibition, concerning which Rodriguez’s eyes had sought; so, stepping aside from his window, Rodriguez beckoned Morano, who at once ran forward delighted to see those ancient wars.

A slight look of scorn showed faint upon the Professor’s face such as you may see anywhere when a master-craftsman perceives the gaze of the ignorant turned towards his particular subject.  But he said no word, and soon speech would have been difficult, for the loud clamour of Morano filled the room:  he had seen the wars and his ecstasies were ungoverned.  As soon as he saw those fights he looked for the Infidels, for his religious mind most loved to see the Infidel slain.  And if my reader discern or suppose some gulf between religion and the recent business of the Inn of the Dragon and Knight, Morano, if driven to admit any connection between murder and his daily bread, would have said, “All the more need then for God’s mercy through the intercession of His most blessed Saints.”  But these words had never passed Morano’s lips, for shrewd as he was in enquiry into any matter that he desired to know, his shrewdness was no less in avoiding enquiry where there might be something that he desired not to know, such as the origin of his wages as servant of the Inn of the Dragon and Knight, those delicate gold rings with settings empty of jewels.

Morano soon recognized the Infidel by his dress, and after that no other wars concerned him.  He slapped his thigh, he shouted encouragement, he howled vile words of abuse, partly because he believed that this foul abuse was rightly the due of the Infidel, and partly because he believed it delighted God.

Rodriguez stood and watched, pleased at the huge joy of the simple man.  The Slave of Orion stood watching in silence too, but who knows if he felt pleasure or any other emotion?  Perhaps his mind was simply like ours; perhaps, as has been claimed by learned men of the best-informed period, that mind had some control upon the comet, even when farthest out from the paths we know.  Morano turned round for a moment to Rodriguez: