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."

"They would give us horses?" said Rodriguez again.

"Surely," said Morano.

And then Rodriguez asked where they cooked the banquet, since he saw
that there were only two rooms in the grea