At the supper table my host went directly to my case by asking, "Have you come out here to prospect or to take hold?"
"To take hold," I answered.
"Are you tired after your journey?" he queried.
"I? No. A night's sleep will fix me." I looked down at my strong arms, and stalwart limbs.
"You sleep well?" His questions were brief.
"I never missed but one night in twenty-one years, except when I sat up with a sick boy one Summer," I replied.
"When was that one night?"
"Oh, during the war when the border ruffians and Copperheads terrorized our town."
"You are like your father, I see." He did not say in what particular; and I added, "I hope I am."
We finished the meal in silence. Then we sat down by the west doorway and saw the whole Saline Valley shimmer through the soft glow of twilight and lose itself at length in the darkness that folded down about it. A gentle breeze swept along from somewhere in the far southwest, a thousand insects chirped in the grasses. Down by the river a few faint sounds of night birds could be heard, and then loneliness and homesickness had their time, denied during every other hour of the twenty-four.