Not that this seemed to occupy his thoughts or cause him any anxiety.

His first act was to disencumber himself of his tattered coat; he then filled and lighted his pipe, and stretched himself full-length on the open hillside, as if to bleach in the fierce sun.
While smoking he carelessly perused the fragment of a newspaper which had enveloped his tobacco, and being struck with some amusing paragraph, read it half aloud again to some imaginary auditor, emphasizing its humor with an hilarious slap upon his leg.
Possibly from the relaxation of fatigue and the bath, which had become a vapor one as he alternately rolled and dried himself in the baking grass, his eyes closed dreamily.

He was awakened by the sound of voices.

They were distant; they were vague; they approached no nearer.
He rolled himself to the verge of the first precipitous grassy descent.
There was another bank or plateau below him, and then a confused depth of olive shadows, pierced here and there by the spiked helmets of pines.

There was no trace of habitation, yet the voices were those of some monotonous occupation, and Lance distinctly heard through them the click of crockery and the ring of some household utensil.