He set out, doggedly and joylessly. He could not even take time for a rest and a meal; he munched at crackers and raisins as he rode. Rusty began to lag wearily behind and he caught him by the collar and dragged him up and across his saddle and held him there, crouched and disapproving, his tail clamped dismally down. He passed three or four little deserted houses on long-abandoned ranches; it was strange, whatever could have brought people into that wilderness; it was pitiful to think of the losing fight they must have put up before they admitted themselves beaten and went away. Sometimes he drew rein and studied them; at one there was a rattlesnake asleep in the sun on the worn sill of the open door; after a little while, to accentuate his loneliness, the sun went under a cloud and a damp and penetrating fog rushed in from the sea; then the little, gray, ghostly houses seemed to shiver and shrink. He found himself picturing the people who had pioneered in them--the men who had come back to them at meal-times, aching-tired and lagging with discouragement, the women who had swept the sagging floors and tacked up calico curtains; women who had said, red-eyed, “It’s more’n a month since we’ve had the mail,” and the other sort of women, who had said--“Look! My seeds are comin’ up a’ready! We’ll have a truck garden here before you can say ‘Jack Robinson!’” Visualizing them kept him occupied for several miles and when he had left them all behind and found the gray emptiness of the world more and more trying he began to recite to himself--verse, fragments of orations, scraps of old high school debates.... _My name is Norval; on the Grampian hills My father feeds his flocks--_ What was the rest of it? Where was it from? He must have learned it years ago, in grammar school, probably. Well, now, he exulted, this was something to do; he _would_ remember the next line; he _would_ remember the poem or whatever the lines came from, the author. Even Snort, the wire-fibered, fire-breathing Snort, was lagging. Overridden! Dean Wolcott was thankful Dr. Mayfield needn’t know. And he, himself?--was he overridden and under-talked? The doctor had been good enough to caution him, but he--fat-headed fool--hadn’t listened or heeded. There would be slumps, his friend had said. There was one now, right enough; perhaps he’d better dismount and make camp in the next sheltered hollow. No; he must keep on; he might meet the Slate’s Spring people, and go back with them, or at least, for a few heartening moments, hear human speech, the blesséd sound of talk. _My name is Norval; on the Grampian hills--_