h nozzling at his palm, and eating as a
horse eats from the hand of its master.

Then he whistled again, placing the Sweetener back between his lips;
and the Galloping Plough sprang after him, and followed at his heels
like a dog.

So, finding himself its master, he bid it stay for the night; and in
the morning he said to the farmer, 'Give me my wages, and let me go!'
And the farmer laughed, saying, 'Take your wages, and go!'

Then Noodle took off his ring, the Sweetener, and laid it between his
lips and blew through it; and up like a moonbeam, and like an Arab
mare, sprang the Galloping Plough at his call. So he leaped upon its
back, crying, 'Carry me away out of this land, O thou moonbeam, and
miracle of beauty, and never slacken nor stay except I bid thee!'

Vainly the farmer, borne down on a torrent of rage and amazement,
whistled his best, and threw corn and rice from the rear; for the
whistling of Noodle was sweeter to the ear, and his corn sweeter to
the taste, and he nearer to the heart of the Galloping Plough than was
the old master whom it left behind.

[Illustration]

III

THE THIRSTY WELL

So they escaped, slitting the swift hours with ungovernable speed. The
furrow they two made in the world that day, as they went shooting over
the round of it, was called in after times the Equator, and men still
know it by the heat of it, though it has since been covered over by
the dust of ages.

To Noodle, as he went careering round it, the whole world's circuit
ran in a line across his brain, entering his vision and passing
through it as a thread through the needle's eye. Nor would he of his
own will ever have stopped his galloping, but that at the completion
of the first round a mighty thirst took hold of him. 'O my moonbeam,'
he said, choking behind parched lips, and sick at heart, 'check me,
or I faint!' And the Galloping Plough stopped at once, and set him to
earth in a green space under the shadow of overhanging boughs.

He found himself in a richly grown garden, a cool paradise for a
traveller to rest in. Close at hand and inviting to the eye was a well
with a bucket slung ready to be let down. Noodle had little thought of
seeking for the owner of the garden to beg for a drink, since water is
an equal gift to all and the right of any man; but as he drew near he
found the means to it withheld from him, the lid being fast locked. He
went on in search of the owner, till at length he came upon the