tter than an Arab mare for swiftness; it warms the very
ground that it enters, so that seeds take root and spring, though it
be the middle of winter. No man sees it but what he loses his heart to
it, and sells his freedom for the possession of it. All here are men
like myself who have become slaves because of that desire. You also,
when you see it, will become slave to it.'

Noodle went on through the summer and the spring corn, till he came
to bare fields. Ahead of him on a hill-top he saw the farmer himself,
sleek and rosy, and of full paunch, lolling like a lord at his ease;
yet with a working eye in the midst of his leisure.

To and fro, up to him and back, shot a silver gleam over the purple
brown of the fields; and Noodle's heart gave a thump at the sight, for
the spell of the Galloping Plough was on him.

Now and then he heard a clear sound that startled him with its note.
It was like the sweet whistling cry of a bird many times multiplied.
Ever when the silver gleam of the Plough had run its farthest from the
farmer, the cry sounded; and at the sound the gleam wavered and stayed
and flew back dartingly to the farmer's side. So Noodle understood how
this was the farmer's signal for the Plough to return; and the Plough
knew it as a horse its master's voice, and came so fast that the wind
whistled against its silver side.

As he watched, Noodle's heart went down into the valley and up the
hillside, following in the track of the Galloping Plough. 'I can never
be happy again,' thought he; 'either I must possess it, or must die.'

He came to the farmer where he sat calling his Plough to him and
letting it go; and the farmer smiled, the wide indulgent smile of a
man who knows that a bargain is about to fall his way.

'What is the price,' asked Noodle, 'of yonder Galloping Plough, that
runs like an Arab mare, and returns to you at your call?'

Said the farmer, 'A year's service; and if the Plough will follow you,
it is yours; if not, then you must be my bondman until you die!'

Noodle looked once the way of the Galloping Plough, and his heart
flapped at his side like a sail which the wind drops and lets go; and
he had no thought or will left in him but to be where the Galloping
Plough was. So he closed hands on the bargain, to be the farmer's
servant either for a year, or for his whole life.

For a year he worked upon the farm, and all the while plotted how he
might win the Galloping Plough to himself. The farm