function in spite of restraint.  He did not rise at once, but he lay there thinking, trying to force the realization that he was again in San Francisco...  He wondered dimly at the power of the homing instinct that had driven him back.  It was plain to him now that almost any other environment would have been materially better.  He had had the whole state of California to choose from, indeed he might have flown even farther afield.  But from the very beginning his feet had turned homeward with uncanny precision.  On those first days and nights when he had lain huddled in any uncertain shelter that came to hand the one thought that had goaded him on was the promise of this return.

And those first hours of freedom had been at once the sweetest and the bitterest.  Wet to the skin, starved, furtive, like a lean, dog-harried coyote he had achieved the mountains and safety more dead than alive.  Looking back, he could see that only the sheerest madness had tempted him to flight in the first place.  Without an ounce of provisions, without blankets, at the start lacking even a hat, he had defied the elements and won.  God was indeed tender with all fools and madmen!

He knew now that under ordinary circumstances he must have perished in the mountain passes.  But the weather had been warm there all during December and more rain than snow had fallen, keeping the beaten paths reasonably open...  He had thought always of these snow-pent places as quite devoid of any life at the winter season, and he was amazed to find how many human beings burrowed in and hibernated during the storm-bound months.  Elsewhere, the skulking traveler received a chary welcome, but in the silent fastness of the hills latchstring and hearthstone and tobacco store were for genial sharing.  In almost any one of these log shelters that he chanced upon he might have settled himself in content and found an indefinite welcome, but the urge to be up and on sent him forward to the next rude threshold.  Thus mountain cabin succeeded mountain cabin until, presently, one day Fred Starratt found himself swinging down to the plains again—­to the broad-bosomed valleys lying parched and expectant under the cruel spell of drought.  Now people regarded him suspiciously, dogs snapped at his heels, and farmers’ women thrust him doles of food through half-opened kitchen doors.  Here and there he picked up a stray job or two.  But he was plainly inefficient for most tasks assigned him...  In the small towns there were not enough jobs to go round ... young men were returning from overseas and dislodging the incompetents who had achieved prosperity because of the labor shortage.  The inland cities were in the grip of strikes ... there were plenty of jobs, but few with the temerity to attempt to fill them.  And, besides, what had Fred Starratt to offer in the way either of skill or brawn?...  He grew to know the meaning of impotence.  No, he was a creature of the paved streets, and to