hings they would
do together when the gambler returned. "The Garden is a book," he
explained. "And I must teach you to turn the pages and read in them."

There was little sleep for Connor that night. He lay awake, turning over
the possibilities of a last minute failure, and when he finally dropped
into a deep, aching slumber it was to be awakened almost at once by the
voice of David calling in the patio. He wakened and found it was the
pink of the dawn.

"Shakra waits at the gate of the patio. Start early, Benjamin, and
thereby you will return soon."

It brought Connor to his feet with a leap. As if he required urging!
Through the hasty breakfast he could not retain his joyous laughter
until he saw David growing thoughtful. But that breakfast was over, and
David's kind solicitations, at length. Shakra was brought to him; his
feet were settled into the stirrups, and the dream changed to a sense of
the glorious reality. She was his--Shakra!

"A journey of happiness for your sake and a speed for mine, Benjamin."

Connor looked down for the last time into the face of the master of the
Garden, half wild and half calm--the face of a savage with the mind of a
man behind it. "If he should take my trail!" he thought with horror.

"Good-by!" he called aloud, and in a burst of joy and sudden
compunction, "God bless you, David!"

"He has blessed me already, for He has given to me a friend."

A touch of the rope--for no Eden Gray would endure a bit--whirled Shakra
and sent her down the terraces like the wind. The avenue of the
eucalyptus trees poured behind them, and out of this, with astonishing
suddenness, they reached the gate.

The fire already burned, for the night was hardly past, and Joseph
squatted with the thin smoke blowing across his face unheeded. He was
grinning with savage hatred and muttering.

Connor knew what profound curse was being called down upon his head, but
he had only a careless glance for Joseph. His eye up yonder where the
full morning shone on the mountains, his mind was out in the world, at
the race track, seeing in prospect beautiful Shakra fleeing away from
the finest of the thoroughbreds. And he saw the face of Ruth, as her
eyes would light at the sight of Shakra. He could have burst into song.

Connor looking forward, high-headed, threw up his arm with a low shout,
and Shakra burst into full gallop down the ravine.

_CHAPTER NINETEEN_

When Ruth Manning read the note through fo