They turned round then and walked slowly back to the cottage, and entered the candlelight and the loud talk of many men out of the hush of the twilight.  But they passed from the room at once by a door on the left, and came thus to a large bedroom, the only other room in the cottage.

“Your room, master,” said Miguel Threegeese.

It was not so big as the hall where the bowmen sat, but it was a goodly room.  The bed was made of carved wood, for there were craftsmen in the forest, and a hunt went all the way round it with dogs and deer.  Four great posts held a canopy over it:  they were four young birch-trees seemingly still wearing their bright bark, but this had been painted on their bare timber by some woodland artist.  The chairs had not the beauty of the great ages of furniture, but they had a dignity that the age of commerce has not dreamed of.  Each one was carved out of a single block of wood:  there was no join in them anywhere.  One of them lasts to this day.

The skins of deer covered the long walls.  There were great basins and jugs of earthenware.  All was forest-made.  The very shadows whispering among themselves in corners spoke of the forest.  The room was rude; but being without ornament, except for the work of simple craftsmen, it had nothing there to offend the sense of right of anyone entering its door, by any jarring conflict with the purposes and traditions of the land in which it stood.  All the woodland spirits might have entered there, and slept—­if spirits sleep—­in the great bed, and left at dawn unoffended.  In fact that age had not yet learned vulgarity.

When Miguel Threegeese left Morano entered.

“Master,” he said, “they are making a banquet for you.”

“Good,” said Rodriguez.  “We will eat it.”  And he waited to hear what Morano had come to say, for he could see that it was more than this.

“Master,” said Morano, “I have been talking with the bowman.  And they will give you whatever you ask.  They are good people, master, and they will give you all things, whatever you asked of them.”

Rodriguez would not show to his servant that it all still puzzled him.

“They are very amiable men,” he said.

“Master,” said Morano, coming to the point, “that Garda, they will have walked after us.  They must be now in Lowlight.  They have all to-night to get new shoes on their horses.  And to-morrow, master, to-morrow, if we be still on foot...”

Rodriguez was thinking.  Morano seemed to him to be talking sense.

“You would like another ride?” he said to Morano.

“Master,” he answered, “riding is horrible.  But the public garrotter, he is a bad thing too.”  And he meditatively stroked the bristles under his chin.

“They would give us horses?” said Rodriguez.

“Anything, master, I am sure of it.  They are good people.”

“They’ll have news of the road by which they left Lowlight,” said Rodriguez reflectively.  “They say la Garda dare not enter the forest,” Morano continued, “but thirty miles from here the forest ends.  They could ride round while we go through.”