When the peaks glowed again, first meeting day in her earliest dancing-grounds of filmy air, they stood now behind the wanderers.  Below them still in darkness lay the land of their dream, but hitherto it had always faded at dawn.  Now hills put up their heads one by one through films of mist; woods showed, then hedges, and afterwards fields, greyly at first and then, in the cold hard light of morning, becoming more and more real.  The sight of the land so long sought, at moments believed by Morano not to exist on earth, perhaps to have faded away when fables died, swept their fatigue from the wanderers, and they stepped out helped by the slope of the Pyrenees and cheered by the rising sun.  They came at last to things that welcome man, little shrubs flowering, and—­at noon—­to the edge of a fir wood.  They entered the wood and lit a merry fire, and heard birds singing, at which they both rejoiced, for the great peaks had said nothing.

They ate the food that Morano cooked, and drew warmth and cheer from the fire, and then they slept a little:  and, rising from sleep, they pushed on through the wood, downward and downward toward the land of their dreams, to see if it was true.

They passed the wood and came to curious paths, and little hills, and heath, and rocky places, and wandering vales that twisted all awry.  They passed through them all with the slope of the mountain behind them.  When level rays from the sunset mellowed the fields of France the wanderers were walking still, but the peaks were far behind them, austerely gazing on the remotest things, forgetting the footsteps of man.  And walking on past soft fields in the evening, all tilted a little about the mountain’s feet, they had scarcely welcomed the sight of the evening star, when they saw before them the mild glow of a window and knew they were come again to the earth that is mother to man.  In their cold savagery the inhuman mountains decked themselves out like gods with colours they took from the sunset; then darkened, all those peaks, in brooding conclave and disappeared in the night.  And the hushed night heard the tiny rap of Morano’s hands on the door of the house that had the glowing window.

THE NINTH CHRONICLE

HOW HE WON A CASTLE IN SPAIN

The woman that came to the door had on her face a look that pleased Morano.

“Are you soldiers?” she said.  And her scared look portended war.

“My master is a traveller looking for the wars,” said Morano.  “Are the wars near?”

“Oh, no, not near,” said the woman; “not near.”

And something in the anxious way she said “not near” pleased Morano also.

“We shall find those wars, master,” he said.

And then they both questioned her.  It seemed the wars were but twenty miles away.  “But they will move northward,” she said.  “Surely they will move farther off?”