Some said the Duke would never attack the Prince because the Duke’s aunt was a princess from the Troubadour’s country.  Another said that there would surely be war.  Others said that there was war already, and too late for man to stop it.  All said it would soon be over.

And one man said that it was the last war that would come, because gunpowder made fighting impossible.  It could smite a man down, he said, at two hundred paces, and a man be slain not knowing whom he fought.  Some loved fighting and some loved peace, he said, but gunpowder suited none.

“I like not the sound of that gunpowder, master,” said Morano to Rodriguez.

“Nobody likes it,” said the man at the table.  “It is the end of war.”  And some sighed and some were glad.  But Rodriguez determined to push on before the last war was over.

Next morning Rodriguez paid the last of his silver pieces and set off with Morano before any but mine host were astir.  There was nothing but the mountains in front of them.

They climbed all the morning and they came to the fir woods.  There they lit a good fire and Morano brought out his frying-pan.  Over the meal they took stock of their provisions and found that, for all the store Morano had brought from the forest, they had now only food for three days; and they were quite without money.  Money in those uplifted wastes seemed trivial, but the dwindling food told Rodriguez that he must press on; for man came among those rocky monsters supplied with all his needs, or perished unnoticed before their stony faces.  All the afternoon they passed through the fir woods, and as shadows began to grow long they passed the last tree.  The village and all the fields about it and the road by which they had come were all spread out below them like little trivial things dimly remembered from very long ago by one whose memory weakens.  Distance had dwarfed them, and the cold regard of those mighty peaks ignored them.  And then a shadow fell on the village, then tiny lights shone out.  It was night down there.  Still the two wanderers climbed on in the daylight.  With their faces to the rocks they scarce saw night climb up behind them.  But when Rodriguez looked up at the sky to see how much light was left, and met the calm gaze of the evening star, he saw that Night and the peaks were met together, and understood all at once how puny an intruder is man.

“Morano,” said Rodriguez, “we must rest here for the night.”

Morano looked round him with an air of discontent, not with his master’s words but with the rocks’ angular hardness.  There was scarce a plant of any kind near them now.  They were near the snow, which had flushed like a wild rose at sunset but was now all grey.  Grey cliffs seemed to be gazing sheer at eternity; and here was man, the creature of a moment, who had strayed in the cold all homeless among his betters.  There was no welcome for them there:  whatever feeling great mountains evoke, that feeling was clear in Rodriguez and Morano.  They were all amongst those that have other aims, other ends, and know naught of man.  A bitter chill from the snow and from starry space drove this thought home.