FIELD-DAYS IN CALIFORNIA 



There were no stars in sight, naturally enough, 

 but that did not concern him. It was the word 

 " wide " that pleased his imagination. Whether 

 he should die gladly when the time came, as Ste- 

 venson felt so sure of doing, he was unprepared 

 to say ; but for the present hour, at any rate, he 

 was living gladly, profoundly enjoying the sense 

 of vastness with which that wide Kansas sky in- 

 spired him. A wide sky it surely was, with scarcely 

 so much as an apple tree to narrow it. As often 

 as not there was nothing to point the horizon but 

 a haycock or two an unknown number of miles 

 away. 



Some of his traveling companions seemed to 

 find the prospect depressing, and the day of the 

 longest, but the bird-gazer passed the hours in 

 surprising content. He almost believed that he 

 should like to live in Kansas, New England High- 

 lander though he is. Unbroken horizons appeared 

 to agree with him. 



At midnight, or thereabout, he woke to hear 

 the engines puffing as if out of breath. The grade 

 must be steep. Unless he was deceived, he could 

 feel the inclination of the car as he lay in bed. 

 Then up went the curtain. Hills loomed all about, 

 with here and there a solitary pine tree standing 

 in the moonlight like a sentry. " You are in Col- 

 orado," one of them said ; and the gazer knew it 

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