n, 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