anionship. There are times when even the voice of a friend is an
intrusion, and the returning exile had happed upon one of them.
Largeness, the inspiring breadth of the immensities, was what he craved
most; and when he had cut the many-coursed dinner short, he hurried back
to his Pullman window, hoping that he might have the smoking-compartment
to himself again.

The unspoken wish was granted. When he entered the smoking-room he
found it empty; and, filling his cutty pipe, he drew the cushioned
wicker chair out to face the open window. Fresh glimpses of the
northward landscape shortly brought a renewal of the heart-stirrings;
and when he finally had the longed-for sight of a bunch of grazing
cattle, with the solitary night-herd hanging by one leg in the saddle to
watch the passing of the train, the call of the homeland was trumpeting
in his ears, and he would have given anything in reason to be able to
changes places, temporarily at least, with the care-free horseman whose
wiry, muscular figure was struck out so artistically against the
dun-colored hillside.

"Would I really do such a thing as that?" he asked himself half
incredulously, when the night-herd and his grazing drove had become only
a picturesque memory; and out of the heart-stirrings and
pulse-quickenings came the answer: "I more than half believe that I
would--that I'd jump at the chance." Then he added regretfully: "But
there isn't going to be any chance."

"Any chance to do what?" rumbled a mellow voice at his elbow, and Blount
turned quickly to find that a big, bearded man, smoking an abnormally
corpulent cigar, had come in to take his seat on the divan.

At another time Blount, the conventional Blount, would have been
self-conscious and embarrassed, as any human being is when he is caught
talking to himself. But with the transformation had come a battering
down of doors in the house of the broader fellowship, and he laughed
good-naturedly.

"You caught me fairly," he acknowledged. "I thought I still had the
place to myself."

"But the chance?" persisted the big man, looking him over appraisively.
"You don't look like a man who has had to hang round on the aidges
hankerin' after things he couldn't get."

"I guess I haven't had to do that very often," was the reflective
rejoinder. "But a mile or so back we passed a bunch of cattle, with the
night man riding watch; I was just saying to myself that I'd like to
change places with that night-herd--on