It was near the close of a summer afternoon. He was sitting at the door
of his lodge, which overlooked, on one side, the far-shining levels
of the Pacific and, on the other, the slow descent to the cultivated
meadows and banks of the Minyo River, that debouched through a waste of
salt-marsh, beach-grass, sand-dunes, and foamy estuary into the
ocean. The headland, or promontory--the only eminence of the Minyo
territory--had been reserved by him for his lodge, partly on account of
its isolation from the village at its base, and partly for the view it
commanded of his territory. Yet his wearying and discontented eyes were
more often found on the ocean, as a possible highway of escape from his
irksome position, than on the plain and the distant range of mountains,
so closely connected with the nearer past and his former detractors. In
his vague longing he had no desire to return to them, even in triumph in
his present security there still lingered a doubt of his ability to
cope with the old conditions. It was more like his easy, indolent
nature--which revived in his prosperity--to trust to this least
practical and remote solution of his trouble. His homesickness was as
vague as his plan for escape from it; he did not know exactly what
he regretted, but it was probably some life he had not enjoyed, some
pleasure that had escaped his former incompetency and poverty.

He had sat thus a hundred times, as aimlessly blinking at the vast
possibilities of the shining sea beyond, turning his back upon the
nearer and more practicable mountains, lulled by the far-off beating of
monotonous rollers, the lonely cry of the curlew and plover, the drowsy
changes of alternate breaths of cool, fragrant reeds and warm, spicy
sands that blew across his eyelids, and succumbed to sleep, as he
had done a hundred times before. The narrow strips of colored cloth,
insignia of his dignity, flapped lazily from his tent-poles, and at last
seemed to slumber with him; the shadows of the leaf-tracery thrown by