"Ah," said Rodriguez, "the morning's a pleasant time," and he
leaned back comfortably in his chair. Morano took one shrewd look
at him, and was soon asleep upon his three-legged stool.

The door opened after a while and mine host appeared. "It is
late," he said. Rodriguez smiled acquiescently and mine host
withdrew, and presently leaving Morano whom his master's voice had
waked, to curl up on the floor in a corner, Rodriguez took the
candle that lit the room and passed once more through the passages
of the inn and down the great corridor of the fastness of the
family that had fallen on evil days, and so came to his chamber. I
will not waste a multitude of words over that chamber; if you have
no picture of it in your mind already, my reader, you are reading
an unskilled writer, and if in that picture it appear a wholesome
room, tidy and well kept up, if it appear a place in which a
stranger might sleep without some faint foreboding of disaster,
then I am wasting your time, and will waste no more of it with
bits of "descriptive writing" about that dim, high room, whose
blackness towered before Rodriguez in the night. He entered and
shut the door, as many had done before him; but for all his youth
he took some wiser precautions than had they, perhaps, who closed
that door before. For first he drew his sword; then for some while
he stood quite still near the door and listened to the rats; then
he looked round the chamber and perceived only one door; then he
looked at the heavy oak furniture, carved by some artist, gnawed
by rats, and all blackened by time; then swiftly opened the door
of the largest cupboard and thrust his sword in to see who might
be inside, but the carved satyr's heads at the top of the cupboard
eyed him silently and nothing moved. Then he noted that though