noon
But perhaps you are one of us , reader , and then you will understand . Only why the hell do n't we get back there again where the Evening Star swings low on the wall of the Mess ? When they rose from table , when they got up from the earth , and the frying-pan was slung on Morano 's back , adding grease to the mere surface of his coat whose texture could hold no more , they pushed on briskly for they saw no sign of houses , unless what Rodriguez saw now dimly above a ravine were indeed a house in the mountains . They had walked from eight till noon without any loitering . They must have done fifteen miles since the mountains were pale blue . And now , every mile they went , on the most awful of the dark ridges the object Rodriguez saw seemed more and more like a house . Yet neither then , nor as they drew still nearer , nor when they saw it close , nor looking back on it after years , did it somehow seem quite right .