“Good wars, master, good wars,” he said with a vast zest, and at once his head was back again at that calm blue window.  In that flash of the head Rodriguez had seen his eyes, blue, round and bulging; the round man was like a boy who in some shop window has seen, unexpected, huge forbidden sweets.  Clearly, in the war he watched things were going well for the Cross, for such cries came from Morano as “A pretty stroke,” “There now, the dirty Infidel,” “Now see God’s power shown,” “Spare him not, good knight; spare him not,” and many more, till, uttered faster and faster, they merged into mere clamorous rejoicing.

But the battles beyond the blue window seemed to move fast, and now a change was passing across Morano’s rejoicings.  It was not that he swore more for the cause of the Cross, but brief, impatient, meaningless oaths slipped from him now; he was becoming irritable; a puzzled look, so far as Rodriguez could see, was settling down on his features.  For a while he was silent except for the little, meaningless oaths.  Then he turned round from the glass, his hands stretched out, his face full of urgent appeal.

“Masters,” he said, “God’s enemy wins!”

In answer to Morano’s pitiful look Rodriguez’ hand went to his sword-hilt; the Slave of Orion merely smiled with his lips; Morano stood there with his hands still stretched out, his face still all appeal, and something more for there was reproach in his eyes that men could tarry while the Cross was in danger and the Infidel lived.  He did not know that it was all finished and over hundreds of years ago, a page of history upon which many pages were turned, and which lay as unalterable as the fate of some warm swift creature of early Eocene days over whose fossil today the strata lie long and silent.

“But can nothing be done, master?” he said when Rodriguez told him this.  And when Rodriguez failed him here, he turned away from the window.  To him the Infidel were game, but to see them defeating Christian knights violated the deeps of his feelings.

Morano sulky excited little more notice from his host and his master who had watched his rejoicings, and they seem to have forgotten this humble champion of Christendom.  The Professor slightly bowed to Rodriguez and extended a graceful hand.  He pointed to the other window.

Reader, your friend shows you his collection of stamps, his fossils, his poems, or his luggage labels.  One of them interests you, you look at it awhile, you are ready to go away:  then your friend shows you another.  This also must be seen; for your friend’s collection is a precious thing; it is that point upon huge Earth on which his spirit has lit, on which it rests, on which it shelters even (who knows from what storms?).  To slight it were to weaken such hold as his spirit has, in its allotted time, upon this sphere.  It were like breaking the twig of a plant upon which a butterfly rests, and on some stormy day and late in the year.