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"You do not think your master can give you youth!" said Rodriguez. The old man knew that he had talked too much, voicing that grievance again of which even the rocks were weary. "Yes," he said briefly, and bowed and led the way into the house. In one of the corridors running out of the hall down which he was leading silently, Rodriguez overtook that old man and questioned him to his face.
With them he hunted and defended the forest, holding all its ways to be sacred, as the old king had taught. It is told how Rodriguez ruled the forest well. And later he made a treaty with the Spanish King acknowledging him sole Lord of Spain, including Shadow Valley, saving that certain right should pertain to the foresters and should be theirs for ever.
Rodriguez still believed it to be the duty of any Christian man to kill Morano. Yet, more than comfort, more than dryness, he missed Morano's cheerful chatter, and his philosophy into which all occasions so easily slipped. Upon his first day's journey all was new; the very anemones kept him company; but now he made the discovery that lonely roads are long.
Dona Rodriguez, at length, turning to her master and mistress said to them, "Will your excellences be pleased to permit me to speak to this gentleman for a moment, for it is requisite I should do so in order to get successfully out of the business in which the boldness of an evil-minded clown has involved me?"
"At Saragossa!" Rodriguez muttered. "At Saragossa," the old man affirmed. Between that ancient citadel of learning and this most savage mountain appeared a gulf scarce to be bridged by thought. "The Professor rests in his mountain," the old man said, "because of a conjunction of the stars unfavourable to study, and his class have gone to their homes for many weeks."
And the other looked back to the peaks beyond which the far lands lay, and made a gesture with his hands. "Señor, at least," said Rodriguez, "let us camp once more together." And even Morano babbled a supplication.
Did I not tell you that we found marked money in his pocket?" "But he never took that money from Mr. Rodriguez?" Mr. Rogers shrugged his shoulders. "That's for him to prove." "But we know he did not," Isabel insisted, and turned to me. "He never took that money from Mr. Rodriguez?" "No," said I; "it was given him last night by Mr. Whitmore in Miss Belcher's shrubbery."
As the third man drank, Rodriguez turned to speak to Morano; and the representative of the law took such advantage of an opportunity that he feared to be fleeting, that when Rodriguez turned round again the bottle was just half empty. Rodriguez had timed it very nicely.
Rodriguez pictured some sad wandering angel, upon some mountain-peak of African lands, resting a moment and talking to the solitudes, telling the lonely valley the mysteries of his home. While lulled though Morano was he gave up his alertness uneasily. All the while the green flame flooded upwards: all the while the tremulous fingers made curious shadows.
"The word," he said, "of the King of Shadow Valley." Rodriguez gazing through the increasing smoke saw not to the other side. He rose and walked round the fire, but the strange man was gone. Rodriguez came back to his place by the fire and sat long there in silence.
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