see more clearly, he found himself on the open western slope of the
mountain, which in the Coast Range was seldom wooded. The spiced
thicket stretched between him and the summit, and again between him and
the stage road that plunges from the terrace, like forked lightning
into the valley below. He could command all the approaches without
being seen. Not that this seemed to occupy his thoughts or cause him
any anxiety. His first act was to disencumber himself of his tattered
coat; he then filled and lighted his pipe, and stretched himself
full-length on the open hillside, as if to bleach in the fierce sun.
While smoking he carelessly perused the fragment of a newspaper which
had enveloped his tobacco, and being struck with some amusing
paragraph, read it half aloud again to some imaginary auditor,
emphasizing its humor with an hilarious slap upon his leg.

Possibly from the relaxation of fatigue and the bath, which had become
a vapor one as he alternately rolled and dried himself in the baking
grass, his eyes closed dreamily. He was awakened by the sound of
voices. They were distant; they were vague; they approached no nearer.
He rolled himself to the verge of the first precipitous grassy descent.
There was another bank or plateau below him, and then a confused depth
of olive shadows, pierced here and there by the spiked helmets of
pines. There was no trace of habitation, yet the voices were those of
some monotonous occupation, and Lance distinctly heard through them the
click of crockery and the ring of some household utensil. It appeared
to be the interjectional, half listless, half perfunctory, domestic
dialogue of an old man and a girl, of which the words were
unintelligible. Their voices indicated the solitude of the mountain,
but without sadness; they were mysterious without being awe-inspiring.
They might have uttered the dreariest commonplaces, but, in their vast
isolation, they seemed musical and eloquent. Lance drew his first