ed.

"There's a little place in the Bowery," he began,--

"Oh, I don't want to know any more about New York," Tavernake
interrupted. "Lean back and close your eyes, smell the cinnamon trees,
listen to that night bird calling every now and then across the ravine.
There's blackness, if you like; there's depth. It's like a cloak of
velvet to look into. But you can't see the bottom--no, not in the
daytime. Listen!"

Pritchard sat up. For a few moments neither spoke. A dozen yards or so
off, a scattered group--the rest of the party--were playing cards around
a fire. The green wood crackled, an occasional murmur of voices, a laugh
or an exclamation, came to their ears, but for the rest, an immense, a
wonderful silence, a silence which seemed to spread far away over that
weird, half-invisible world! Tavernake listened reverently.

"Isn't it marvelous!" he exclaimed. "We haven't seen a human being
except our own party, for three days. There probably isn't one within
hearing of us now. Very likely no living person has ever set foot in
this precise spot."

"Oh, it's big," Pritchard admitted, "it's big and it's restful, but it
isn't satisfying. It does for you for a time because you started life
wrong and you needed a reaction. But for me--ah, well!" he added, "I
hear the call right across these thousands of miles of forests and
valley and swamp. I hear the electric cars and the clash of the overhead
railway, I see the flaring lights of Broadway and I hear the babel of
tongues. I am going back to it, Tavernake. There's plenty to go on with.
We've done more than carry out our program."

"Back to New York!" Tavernake muttered, disconsolately.

"So you're not ready yet?" Pritchard demanded.

"Heavens, no!" Tavernake answered. "Who would be? What is there in New
York to make up for this?"

Pritchard was silent for a moment.

"Well," he said, "one of us must be getting back near civilization.
The syndicate will be expecting to hear from us. Besides, we've reports
enough already. It's time something was decided about that oil country.
We've done some grand work there, Tavernake."

Tavernake nodded. He was lying on his side and his eyes were fixed
wistfully southward, over the glimmering moonlit valley, over the great
wilderness of virgin pine woods which hung from the mountains on the
other side, away through the cleft in the hills to the plains beyond,
chaotic, a world unseen.

"If you like to go on for a bit," Pritchard