ed
Satan.

They demanded the food and shelter that armed men have the right to
demand.

In the morning they were gone. They became a memory, which lingered
like a vision, made partly of sunset and partly of the splendour of
their cloaks, and so went down the years that those two folk had, a
thing of romance, magnificence and fear. And now the slope of the
mountain began to lift against them, and they rode slowly towards those
unearthly peaks that had deserted the level fields before ever man came
to them, and that sat there now familiar with stars and dawn with the
air of never having known of man. And as they rode they talked. And
Rodriguez talked with the four knights that rode with him, and they
told tales of war and told of the ways of fighting of many men: and
Morano rode behind them beside the captive and questioned him all the
morning about his castle in Spain. And at first the captive answered
his questions slowly, as if he were weary, or as though he were long
from home and remembered its features dimly; but memory soon returned
and he answered clearly, telling of such a castle as Morano had not
dreamed; and the eyes of the fat man bulged as he rode beside him,
growing rounder and rounder as they rode.

They came by sunset to that wood of firs in which Rodriguez had rested.
In the midst of the wood they halted and tethered their horses to
trees; they tied blankets to branches and made an encampment; and in
the midst of it they made a fire, at first, with pine-needles and the
dead lower twigs and then with great logs. And there they feasted
together, all seven, around the fire. And when the feast was over and
the great logs burning well, and red sparks went up slowly towards the
silver stars, Morano turned to the prisoner seated beside him and "Tell
the senors," he said, "of my master's castle."

And in the silence, that was rather lulled than broken by the
whispering wind from the snow that sighed through the wood, the captive
slowly lifted up his head and spoke in his queer accent.

"Senors, in Aragon, across the Ebro, are many goodly towers." And as he
spoke they all leaned forward to listen, dark faces bright with
firelight. "On the Ebro's southern bank stands," he went on, "my home."

He told of strange rocks rising from the Ebro; of buttresses built
among them in unremembered times; of the great towers lifting up in
multitudes from the buttresses; and of the mighty wall, windowless
until it came to