When he had suggested food or rest Morano had fallen in with his wishes; when he had suggested winning a castle in vague wars Morano had agreed with him.  Now he had dismissed Morano and had driven him away at the rapier’s point.  There was no one now either to cook his food or to believe in the schemes his ambition made.  There was no one now to speak of the wars as the natural end of the journey.  Alone in the rain the wars seemed far away and castles hard to come by.  The unromantic rain in which no dreams thrive fell on and on.

The village of Lowlight was some way behind him, as he went with mournful thoughts through the drizzling rain, when he caught the smell of bacon.  He looked for a house but the plain was bare except for small bushes.  He looked up wind, which was blowing from the west, whence came the unmistakable smell of bacon:  and there was a small fire smoking greyly against a bush; and the fat figure crouching beside it, although the face was averted, was clearly none but Morano.  And when Rodriguez saw that he was tenderly holding the infamous frying-pan, the very weapon that had done the accursed deed, then he almost felt righteous anger; but that frying-pan held other memories too, and Rodriguez felt less fury than what he thought he felt.  As for killing Morano, Rodriguez believed, or thought he believed, that he was too far from the road for it to be possible to overtake him to mete out his just punishment.  As for the bacon, Rodriguez scorned it and marched on down the road.  Now one side of the frying-pan was very hot, for it was tilted a little and the lard had run sideways.  By tilting it back again slowly Morano could make the fat run back bit by bit over the heated metal, and whenever it did so it sizzled.  He now picked up the frying-pan and one log that was burning well and walked parallel with Rodriguez.  He was up-wind of him, and whenever the bacon-fat sizzled Rodriguez caught the smell of it.  A small matter to inspire thoughts; but Rodriguez had eaten nothing since the morning before, and ideas surged through his head; and though they began with moral indignation they adapted themselves more and more to hunger, until there came the idea that since his money had bought the bacon the food was rightfully his, and he had every right to eat it wherever he found it.  So much can slaves sometimes control the master, and the body rule the brain.

So Rodriguez suddenly turned and strode up to Morano.  “My bacon,” he said.

“Master,” Morano said, for it was beginning to cool, “let me make another small fire.”

“Knave, call me not master,” said Rodriguez.