oldbricked him.

He spent the night in the little country hotel, and on Sunday morning,
astride a saddle-horse rented from the Glen Ellen butcher, rode out of
the village. The brickyard was close at hand on the flat beside the
Sonoma Creek. The kilns were visible among the trees, when he glanced
to the left and caught sight of a cluster of wooded knolls half a mile
away, perched on the rolling slopes of Sonoma Mountain. The mountain,
itself wooded, towered behind. The trees on the knolls seemed to
beckon to him.

The dry, early-summer air, shot through with sunshine, was wine to him.
Unconsciously he drank it in deep breaths. The prospect of the
brickyard was uninviting. He was jaded with all things business, and
the wooded knolls were calling to him. A horse was between his legs--a
good horse, he decided; one that sent him back to the cayuses he had
ridden during his eastern Oregon boyhood. He had been somewhat of a
rider in those early days, and the champ of bit and creak of
saddle-leather sounded good to him now.

Resolving to have his fun first, and to look over the brickyard
afterward, he rode on up the hill, prospecting for a way across country
to get to the knolls. He left the country road at the first gate he
came to and cantered through a hayfield. The grain was waist-high on
either side the wagon road, and he sniffed the warm aroma of it with
delighted nostrils. Larks flew up before him, and from everywhere came
mellow notes. From the appearance of the road it was patent that it
had been used for hauling clay to the now idle brickyard. Salving his
conscience with the idea that this was part of the inspection, he rode
on to the clay-pit--a huge scar in a hillside. But he did not linger
long, swinging off again to the left and leaving the road. Not a
farm-house was in sight, and the change from the city crowding was
essentially satisfying. He rode now through open woods, across little
flower-scattered glades, till he came upon a spring. Flat on the
ground, he drank deeply of the clear water, and, looking about him,
felt with a shock the beauty of the world. It came to him like a
discovery; he had never realized it before, he concluded, and also, he
had forgotten much. One could not sit in at high finance and keep
track of such things. As he drank in the air, the scene, and the
distant song of larks, he felt like a poker-player rising from a
night-long table and coming forth from the pent at