That was fifteen years ago. I'd been hunting
through here when I was a boy, on vacations from college, and
when I was all down and out it seemed a yearning came to me to go
back to the country. So I quit, quit everything, absolutely, and
came to live in the Valley of the Moon--that's the Indian name,
you know, for Sonoma Valley. I lived in the lean-to the first
year; then I built the cabin and sent for my books. I never knew
what happiness was before, nor health. Look at me now and dare
to tell me that I look forty-seven."
"I wouldn't give a day over forty," Daylight confessed.
"Yet the day I came here I looked nearer sixty, and that was
fifteen years ago."
They talked along, and Daylight looked at the world from new
angles. Here was a man, neither bitter nor cynical, who laughed
at the city-dwellers and called them lunatics; a man who did not
care for money, and in whom the lust for power had long since
died. As for the friendship of the city-dwellers, his host spoke
in no uncertain terms.
"What did they do, all the chaps I knew, the chaps in the clubs
with whom I'd been cheek by jowl for heaven knows how long? I
was not beholden to them for anything, and when I slipped out
there was not one of them to drop me a line and say, 'How are
you, old man? Anything I can do for you?' For several weeks it
was: 'What's become of Ferguson?' After that I became a
reminiscence and a memory.
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