“We were very nearly too late back from that outing, master,” remarked Morano.

“How know you that?” said Rodriguez.

“This old body knew,” said Morano.  “Those heart-thumpings, this warmness, and all the things that make a fat body comfortable, they were stopping, master, they were spoiling, they were getting cold and strange:  I go no more errands for that senor.”

A certain diffidence about criticising his host even now; and a very practical vein that ran through his nature, now showing itself in anxiety for a bed at so late an hour; led Rodriguez to change the subject.  He wanted that aged butler, yet dare not ring the bell; for he feared lest with all the bells there might be in use that frightful practice that he had met by the outer door, a chain connected with some hideous hook that gave anguish to something in the basement whenever one touched the handle, so that the menials of that grim Professor were shrilly summoned by screams.  And therefore Rodriguez sought counsel of Morano, who straightway volunteered to find the butler’s quarters, by a certain sense that he had of the fitness of things:  and forth he went, but would not leave the room without the scabbard and the handle of the frying-pan lashed to it, which he bore high before him in both his hands as though he were leading some austere procession.  And even so he returned with that aged man the butler, who led them down dim corridors of stone; but, though he showed the way, Morano would go in front, still holding up that scabbard and handle before him, while Rodriguez held the bare sword.  And so they came to a room lit by the flare of one candle, which their guide told them the Professor had prepared for his guest.  In the vastness of it was a great bed.  Shadows and a whir as of wings passed out of the door as they entered.  “Bats,” said the ancient guide.  But Morano believed he had routed powers of evil with the handle of his frying-pan and his master’s scabbard.  Who could say what they were in such a house, where bats and evil spirits sheltered perennially from the brooms of the just?  Then that ancient man with the lips of some woodland thing departed, and Rodriguez went to the great bed.  On a pile of straw that had been cast into the room Morano lay down across the door, setting the scabbard upright in a rat-hole near his head, while Rodriguez lay down with the bare sword in his hand.  There was only one door in the room, and this Morano guarded.  Windows there were, but they were shuttered with raw oak of enormous thickness.  He had already enquired with his sword behind the velvet curtains.  He felt secure in the bulk of Morano across the only door, at least from creatures of this world:  and Morano feared no longer either spirit or spell, believing that he had vanquished the Professor with his symbol, and all such allies as he may have had here or elsewhere.  But not thus easily do we overcome the powers of evil.

A step was heard such as man walks with at the close of his later years, coming along the corridor of stone; and they knew it for the Professor’s butler returning.  The latch of the door trembled and lifted, and the great oak door bumped slowly against Morano, who arose grumbling, and the old man appeared.