g like an
unused machine afraid of itself. "You'd ought to took the t'other fork
of the road back yander. It's a goodish mile on down this way now to
where you das to turn your cyar round. When you get where you kin turn,
then go back and take the t'other fork. It'll take you right to Joe's
door about."

The words came hesitatingly, as if the speaker had little use for
sounding them in his solitary, silent life. Fishermen don't catch fish
by talking to them.

"A mile! I think I'll turn right here," Jerry declared.

Then, as the meek unknown watched her in open-mouthed wonder, she swung
her car deftly about, the outer wheels barely keeping a toe-hold on the
edge of the river-bank, with hardly more than an inch of space between
them and the crumbling sand above the water. As she faced the way over
which she had come she reached out to drop a piece of silver into the
man's hand. He let it fall to the ground, then picked it up and laid it
on the top of the car door.

"I ain't workin' for the gov'mint," he quavered. "I thankee, but I don't
have no knowin's to sell. Ye're welcome to my ketch of information any
day ye're on the river."

He made an odd half-military salute toward his old yellow-brown cap and
shuffled across the road toward a narrow path running back through the
bushes.

At the bend in the river Jerry found herself.

"That must be the ranch-house that Mr. Ponk gave me for a landmark, for
there goes the river bending east, all right. What a quaint, picturesque
thing that is, and built of stone, too, with ivy all over it! It must
have been here a long time. And how well kept everything is! The old
Teddy Bear said it was 'Joe's place.' Well, Joe keeps it looking as
different from some of the places I've passed as 'Eden' differs from
other country-places back in Pennsylvania."

The long, low, stone ranch-house, nestling under its sheltering vines,
had an old and familiarly homey look to Jerry.

"That wide porch is a dream. I'll have one just like it on my place. I
wonder if this farm has any name. I suppose not. What shall I call mine?
'New Eden' wouldn't do, of course. I might call it 'Paradise Prairie.'
That's pretty and smooth. Gene would like that, and talk a lot about
going 'from Nature up to Nature's God.' I don't care a whiff about all
his religious talk, somehow. That's just one thing wherein we will never
agree. If I can go from nature to the finished produce I'll be
satisfied. Oh, yonder are my