in the balmy air that bathes the hills and canyons in the early
morning, whose wooing voices sing in the music of birds and chant in
the cries of wild things at night, had taken captive their wills, and
they could not go if they would.

Their cabins were scattered through the valleys, or on the sides of the
hills, or in the recesses of the canyons, miles apart. Sometimes,
though rarely, there was a little family in one. But usually the only
occupant was an elderly or middle-aged man, who spoke but little about
himself or his past, and was as destitute of curiosity as to what was
going on in the outside world as he was about the former lives and
affairs of his fellow wreckage.

Nevertheless, I had the good fortune to learn much of the story of one
of these men. A member of our camping party chanced to make speaking
acquaintance with him at the quaint old adobe house under its huge,
spreading grapevine and waving cottonwoods, which served as stage
station and supply store--the centre of such civilization as there was
in all the region within a radius of thirty or forty miles. Every one
in that country called him "Old Dan." I found his name one day in the
Great Register--twin relic, with the shabby old stage, of the outer
world--which hung in the stage station. But as it was not his real
name, nor probably any name by which he was ever known outside of those
hills, it will be of no use to mention it here.

Old Dan, learning that we were not pleased with our camping-place,
invited us to pitch our tents under some trees near his cabin. And for
one delightful month of the southern summer we brought into his life
the strange sensation of voices fresh from the world he had discarded.
The unwonted influence unlocked his memories and sent his mind back to