“I must go back,” she said. “We are on our way to visit friends. We get off at Missoula. Is there any message I can take back to--to any one, when I go home in the spring.” Robin shook his head. “Remember me to the hills when you go ridin’,” he muttered. “That’s all.” The girl’s eyes clouded. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and held out her hand. “Good-by, Robin Tyler--and good luck to you.” Robin turned his face to the frosted window. There was a blur in his eyes as well as on the pane. A lump in his throat grew and swelled till it seemed as if it would choke him. CHAPTER XV--ECHOES FROM AFAR Sitting on a pierhead jutting from the Seattle water front one Sunday afternoon in April Robin surrendered himself to a mood that he had been choking down all winter. Materially he had done well enough. He had sought sanctuary in this seaport city and found what he sought. He had walked the streets with an assurance that he was lost in the swarming ant heap. So far as Montana, the Block S, those far wide ranges went, he had ceased to be. And since he had not come there seeking glory and fortune by the white-collar route he had soon found work that he could do and for which he was well paid. But he didn’t fit. He was an alien in an alien land. These people did not speak his tongue. His ways were not their ways. Even now the lessened rumble of Sunday traffic beat on his brain, a faint distasteful sound, which in midweek roar annoyed and irritated him with its clang of complicated machinery, its feverish scurrying of crowds--there seemed no more purpose in this medley of unrest than there was in the senseless milling of a herd--except that the human herd went surging this way and that under the constant pressure of the invisible riders of necessity. Here on this April afternoon the sun shone on rippling water at his feet. The surrounding hills and Sound islands all washed clean by drenching rain were bright with spring growth. For weeks, for months, Robin had lived and moved under the gloom of murky skies, great clouds that wept eternal tears. He had shivered on his wagon in damp fogs carrying a chill like the clammy hands of death. The sun was lost in that gloom. It was all gray, gray sky, gray streets, gray sea. Sometimes the very soul in him turned gray. He was too far from all that he had known and cared about. Voluntary exile he might have endured with better grace, knowing that he could return if he wished. But he could not go back. If he could not go back to places and things he knew he did not care where he went.