Rodriguez opened his lips to correct Morano but reflected that, though in his crude and base-born way, he had correctly interpreted the law so far as his mind was able.

So he briefly said “Yes,” and rose and returned to the road, giving Morano no order to follow him; and this was the last concession he made to the needs of Chivalry on account of the sin of Morano.  Morano gathered up the frying-pan and followed Rodriguez, and when they came to the road he walked behind him in silence.

For three or four miles they walked thus, Morano knowing that he followed on sufferance and calling no attention to himself with his garrulous tongue.  But at the end of an hour the rain lifted; and with the coming out of the sun Morano talked again.

“Master,” he said, “the next man that you choose to kill you, let him be one too base-born to know the tricks of the rapier, too ignorant to do aught but wish you well, some poor fat fool over forty who shall be too heavy to elude your rapier’s point and too elderly for it to matter when you kill him at your Chivalry, the best of life being gone already at forty-five.”

“There is timber here,” said Rodriguez.  “We will have some more bacon while you dry my cloak over a fire.”

Thus he acknowledged Morano again for his servant but never acknowledged that in Morano’s words he had understood any poor sketch of Morano’s self, or that the words went to his heart.

“Timber, Master?” said Morano, though it did not need Rodriguez to point out the great oaks that now began to stand beside their journey, but he saw that the other matter was well and thus he left well alone.

Rodriguez waved an arm towards the great trees.  “Yes, indeed,” said Morano, and began to polish up the frying-pan as he walked.

Rodriguez, who missed little, caught a glimpse of tears in Morano’s eyes, for all that his head was turned downward over the frying-pan; yet he said nothing, for he knew that forgiveness was all that Morano needed, and that he had now given him:  and it was much to give, reflected Rodriguez, for so great a crime, and dismissed the matter from his mind.

And now their road dipped downhill, and they passed a huge oak and then another.  More and more often now they met these solitary giants, till their view began to be obscured by them.  The road dwindled till it was no better than a track, the earth beside it was wild and rocky; Rodriguez wondered to what manner of land he was coming.  But continually the branches of some tree obscured his view and the only indication he had of it was from the road he trod, which seemed to tell him that men came here seldom.  Beyond every huge tree that they passed as they went downhill Rodriguez hoped to get a better view, but always there stood another to close the vista.  It was some while before he realised that he had entered a forest.  They were come to Shadow Valley.

The grandeur of this place, penetrated by shafts of sunlight, coloured by flashes of floating butterflies, filled by the chaunt of birds rising over the long hum of insects, lifted the fallen spirits of Rodriguez as he walked on through the morning.