Scarcely were late birds home before Rodriguez sought his bed, and not all of them were sleeping before he slept.

Another morning shone, and appeared to Spain, and all at once Rodriguez was wide awake.  It was the eighth day of his wanderings.

When he had breakfasted and paid his due in silver he and Morano departed, leaving mine host upon his doorstep bowing with an almost perplexed look on his shrewd face as he took the points of moustachios and beard lightly in turn between finger and thumb:  for we of our day enter vague details about ourselves in the book downstairs when we stay at inns, but it was mine host’s custom to gather all that with his sharp eyes.  Whatever he gathered, Rodriguez and Morano were gone.

But soon their pace dwindled, the trot slackening and falling to a walk; soon Rodriguez learned what it is to travel with tired horses.  To Morano riding was merely riding, and the discomforts of that were so great that he noticed no difference.  But to Rodriguez, his continual hitting and kicking his horse’s sides, his dislike of doing it, the uselessness of it when done, his ambition before and the tired beast underneath, the body always some yards behind the beckoning spirit, were as great vexation as a traveller knows.  It came to dismounting and walking miles on foot; even then the horses hung back.  They halted an hour over dinner while the horses grazed and rested, and they returned to their road refreshed by the magic that was in the frying-pan, but the horses were no fresher.

When our bodies are slothful and lie heavy, never responding to the spirit’s bright promptings, then we know dullness:  and the burden of it is the graver for hearing our spirits call faintly, as the chains of a buccaneer in some deep prison, who hears a snatch of his comrades’ singing as they ride free by the coast, would grow more unbearable than ever before.  But the weight of his tired horse seemed to hang heavier on the fanciful hopes that Rodriguez’ dreams had made.  Farther than ever seemed the Pyrenees, huger than ever their barrier, dimmer and dimmer grew the lands of romance.

If the hopes of Rodriguez were low, if his fancies were faint, what material have I left with which to make a story with glitter enough to hold my readers’ eyes to the page:  for know that mere dreams and idle fancies, and all amorous, lyrical, unsubstantial things, are all that we writers have of which to make a tale, as they are all that the Dim Ones have to make the story of man.

Sometimes riding, sometimes going on foot, with the thought of the long, long miles always crowding upon Rodriguez, overwhelming his hopes; till even the castle he was to win in the wars grew too pale for his fancy to see, tired and without illusions, they came at last by starlight to the glow of a smith’s forge.  He must have done forty-five miles and he knew they were near Caspe.

The smith was working late, and looked up when Rodriguez halted.  Yes, he knew Gonzalez, a master in the trade:  there was a welcome for his horses.