was, he used sometimes
as an alpenstock, sometimes (I was told) as a weapon.
I do not know why he should have used it as a weapon, for he had,
and afterwards showed me, an excellent six-shooter in his pocket.
`But THAT,' he said, `I use only for peaceful purposes.'
I have no notion what he meant.

"He sat down on the rough bench outside my inn and drank some wine
from the vineyards below, sighing with ecstasy over it like one
who had travelled long among alien, cruel things and found at last
something that he knew. Then he sat staring rather foolishly at
the rude lantern of lead and coloured glass that hangs over my door.
It is old, but of no value; my grandmother gave it to me long ago:
she was devout, and it happens that the glass is painted with a crude
picture of Bethlehem and the Wise Men and the Star. He seemed
so mesmerized with the transparent glow of Our Lady's blue gown and
the big gold star behind, that he led me also to look at the thing,
which I had not done for fourteen years.

"Then he slowly withdrew his eyes from this and looked out eastward
where the road fell away below us. The sunset sky was a vault
of rich velvet, fading away into mauve and silver round the edges
of the dark mountain amphitheatre; and between us and the ravine below
rose up out of the deeps and went up into the heights the straight
solitary rock we call Green Finger. Of a queer volcanic colour,
and wrinkled all over with what looks undecipherable writing,
it hung there like a Babylonian pillar or needle.

"The man silently stretched out his rake in that direction,
and before he spoke I knew what he meant. Beyond the great green
rock in the purple sky hung a single star.

"`A star in the east,' he said in a strange hoarse voice like one of our
ancient eagles'. `The wise men followed the star and found the house.
But if I followed the star, should I find the house?'

"`It depends perhaps,' I said, smiling, `on whether you are a wise man.'
I refrained from adding that he certainly didn't look it.

"`You may judge for yourself,' he answered. `I am a man who left his own
house because he could no longer bear to be away from it.'

"`It certainly sounds paradoxical,' I said.

"`I heard my wife and children talking and saw them moving
about the room,' he continued, `and all the time I knew
they were walking and talking in another house thousands
of miles away, under the light of different skies, and beyond
the series of th