tomorrow morning, I'll run out of the fog-belt in forty-five minutes and
be in the sunshine for the remainder of the journey. Yes, by
Jupiter--and for the remainder of my life!"

"You want to feast your eyes on the countryside, eh?"

"I do. It's April, and I want to see the Salinas valley with its oaks; I
want to see the bench-lands with the grape-vines just budding; I want to
see some bald-faced cows clinging to the Santa Barbara hillsides, and I
want to meet some fellow on the train who speaks the language of my
tribe."

"Farrel, you're all Irish. You're romantic and poetical, and you feel
the call of kind to kind. That's distinctly a Celtic trait."

"_Quién sabe_? But I have a great yearning to speak Spanish with
somebody. It's my mother tongue."

"There must be another reason," the captain bantered him. "Sure there
isn't a girl somewhere along the right of way and you are fearful, if you
take the night-train, that the porter may fail to waken you in time to
wave to her as you go by her station?"

Farrel shook his head.

"There's another reason, but that isn't it. Captain, haven't you been
visualizing every little detail of your home-coming?"

"You forget, Farrel, that I'm a regular-army man, and we poor devils get
accustomed to being uprooted. I've learned not to build castles in