to five dollars more
a ton than the rank-stalked valley hay.

Daylight listened, there came to him a sudden envy of this young fellow
living right in the midst of all this which Daylight had travelled
through the last few hours.

"What in thunder are you going back to the telegraph office for?" he
demanded.

The young man smiled with a certain wistfulness. "Because we can't get
ahead here..." (he hesitated an instant), "and because there are added
expenses coming. The rent, small as it is, counts; and besides, I'm
not strong enough to effectually farm the place. If I owned it, or if
I were a real husky like you, I'd ask nothing better. Nor would the
wife." Again the wistful smile hovered on his face. "You see, we're
country born, and after bucking with cities for a few years, we kind of
feel we like the country best. We've planned to get ahead, though, and
then some day we'll buy a patch of land and stay with it."

The graves of the children? Yes, he had relettered them and hoed the
weeds out. It had become the custom. Whoever lived on the ranch did
that. For years, the story ran, the father and mother had returned
each summer to the graves. But there had come a time when they came no
more, and then old Hillard started the custom. The scar across the
valley? An old mine. It had never paid. The men had worked on it,
off and on, for years, for the indications had been good. But that was
years and years ago. No paying mine had ever been struck in the
valley, though there had been no end of prospect-holes put down and
there had been a sort of rush there thirty years back.

A frail-looking young woman came to the door to call the young man to
supper. Daylight's first thought was that city living had not agreed
with her. And then he noted the slight tan and healthy glow that
seemed added to her face, and he decided that the country was the place
for her. Declining an invitation to supper, he rode on for Glen Ellen
sitting slack-kneed in the saddle and softly humming forgotten songs.
He dropped down the rough, winding road through covered pasture, with
here and there thickets of manzanita and vistas of open glades. He
listened greedily to the quail calling, and laughed outright, once, in
sheer joy, at a tiny chipmunk that fled scolding up a bank, slipping on
the crumbly surface and falling down, then dashing across the road
under his horse's nose and, still scolding, scrabbling up a protecting
oak.