A lonely life? Yes; but remember there was money to be made in sheep-raising in the gray wastes; and I was willing to forego, for a time, all that civilization could give. So I dulled my recollections of the old life and the things that were dear to me, and went to work with a will in caring for the dusty, bleating, aimlessly-moving sheep. I wanted to be rich. Not for the sake of riches, but to be independent of the toil of bread-winning. I longed with all my soul to have money, that I might gratify my old desires for travel away to the far ends of the earth. All my life I had dreamed of the day I was to turn my face to those old lands far away, which would be new lands to me. So I was glad to sacrifice myself for a few years in the monstrous stillness of the gray plains so that I might the sooner be free to go where I would. Friends tried to dissuade me from the isolated life. They declared I was of a temperament that could not stand the strain of the awful quiet there--the eternal silence broken only by some lone coyote’s yelp, or the always “Baa! Baa!” of the sheep. They told me that men before my time had gone stark mad--that I, too, would lose my mind. I laughed at them, and went my way; yet, in truth, there was many a day through the long years I lived there, when I felt myself near to madness as I watched the slow-moving, dust-powdered woolly backs go drifting across the landscape as a gray fog drifts in from the sea. It seemed the desert was the emptier by reason of the sheep being there, for nothing else moved. Never a sign of life but the sheep; never a sound but the everlasting “Baa! Baa! Baa!” Oh! I tell you I was very near to madness then, and many another man in my place would have broken under the tension. But not I. I was strong because I was growing rich. I made money. I took it eastward to the sea, and watched the ships go out. It was a fine thing to see the great waste of waters move, as the desert waste never had. There was the sea, and beyond lay far lands! Still, I said to myself: “No; not yet will I go. I will wait yet a little longer. I will wait until I hold so much gold in my hands that I need never return--need never again look upon the desert and its ways.” So--though I watched the ships sail away to waiting lands beyond--the time was not yet ripe for me to go. Back to the money-making a little longer--back for a while to the stupid, staring-eyed sheep--then a final good-bye to the desert’s awful emptiness, and that never-ceasing sound that is worse than silence--the bleating of the flocks! * * * * * It was on one of these trips to the Atlantic coast that I saw, for the first time, him of the Half-a-Soul.