And so there was nothing in California
for him, he decided. A man could no longer go West and grow up with the
country--but he could go North.

Thompson was sitting on the border of a road that runs between San
Mateo and the city when he definitely committed himself to doubling on
his tracks, to counteracting the trick of fate which had sent him to a
place where he did not wish to go. He was looking between the trees and
out over an undulating valley floored with emerald fields, studded with
oaks, backed by the bare Hamiltons to the east, and westward by the
redwood-clad ruggedness of the Santa Cruz range. And he was not seeing
this loveliness of landscape at all. He was looking far beyond and his
eyes were full of miles upon miles of untrodden forest, the sanctuary of
silence and furtive living things, of mountains that lifted snowy spires
to heaven high over the glaciers that scarred their sides. And the
smells that for a moment rose strongly in his nostrils were not the
smells of palm and gum and poppy-dotted fields, but odors of pine and
spruce and the smell of birchwood burning in campfires. He came out of
that queer projection of mind into great distance with a slight shake of
his head and a feeling of wonder. It had been very vivid. And it dawned
upon him that for a minute he had grown sentimentally lonely for that
grim, unconquered region where he had first learned the pangs of
loneliness, where he had suffered in body and spirit until he had
learned a lesson he would never forget while he lived.

The road itself, abutting upon stately homes and modest bungalows behind
a leafy screen of Australian gums, ran straight as an arrow down the
peninsula toward the city and the bay, a broad, smoothly asphalted
highway upon that road where the feet of the Franciscan priests had
traced the _Camino Real_. And down this highway both north and south
there passed many motor cars swiftly and silently or with less speed and
more noise, according to their quality and each driver's mood.

Thompson rested, watching them from the grassy level beneath a tree. He
rather regretted now the impulse which had made him ship his bag and
blanket roll from the last town, and undertake this solitary hike. He
had merely humored a whim to walk through orchards and green fields in a
leisurely fashion, to be a careless trudger for a day. True, he was
saving carfare, but he observed dryly that he was expending many
dollars' worth of energy--to