Edward slept one night simply and uncomfortably beside the prostrate bicycle under a twisted madrone tree, on soil thick with intimate small weeds—soil that for the first two hours was soft and seemed a vantage point from which to sing to the stars, but for the rest of the night was hard and infested with ants. Stars are stark comfort at three in the morning. All next day he was in sunlight on the naked low hills that follow the line of the sea. The hills were burnt; it seemed that they had even caught something of the colour of flame. They were burnt tawny gold and crimson. These were the naked hills; they were done with the draperies of spring. Edward bicycled briskly. He felt rather ashamed of having to move his feet in such a brisk prancing way; he thought that he shewed the ridiculous jauntiness of a toy dog. He was approaching _The World’s Egg Center_. The hills broke out into an eruption of white hens. Edward thought that, just as every provincial mother looks to London, so it must be every hen’s ambition to have an egg making its début at the _World’s Egg Center_. Twelve miles out of the egg metropolis suburbs of hens were already thick on the ground. Apart from hens, the only flowers of that bare country seemed to be boulders, great proud purple boulders rooted in their own clear shadows. Sometimes little wind-bent trees, like jockeys, rode the boulders. Edward called upon many chicken ranchers in the hope of introducing Milton to their boys. He was becoming desperate. He had thirty-five cents left in the world. Chickens must be an absorbing pursuit; no rancher had any time or attention for Milton. Edward spent twenty-five cents on a very bad meal. After sunset he crouched under a leaning rock on the slope of a hill. He slept well and in the morning found his waking eyes on fire in the glare of a solitary gold poppy, gloriously open within three inches of his face. The poppy was thickly and incredibly golden; its petals had a sheen like a little wind on sunny water and, deep within its cup, dusted with gold, was its treasure, a tiny unkempt chrysanthemum of gold with a crisp core of black. At the next ranch visited by Edward the disorder of his clothes, after two nights under the dishevelling stars, had its effect. A man in blue jeans, carrying a bucket of grain, met Edward at the gate and said, “We found and lifted the latch of the polar star.” Edward was no fool. After a second’s surprise he realised that his ears were betraying him again. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t quite catch what you said.” “What’s that?” “I didn’t hear what you said.” “You don’t need to hear anything except Keep Out,” said the man waving at a terse sign rooted in a whirlpool of chickens: KEEP OUT THIS MEANS YOU. “We don’t want no hoboes here.” “My name is Edward Williams,” said Edward urgently. “I want you to look at——”