e garden, and each with his high-sounding name, and
princely lineage, and his thrilling history, and where I had a thousand
black cattle at pasture in the old orchard.

It might be that an ancient, passing, would not see the drove, because
his eyes were hide-bound, but he would see me as I galloped along by the
hot steers, and hear the shouting, and he could not doubt that they were
there. I was tremendously busy in those earlier days. No cattle king of
the Hills had one-half the wonderful business. I dropped to sleep in old
Liza's arms with my mighty plans swimming in my head. I had long rides
and many bunches of cattle to gather on to-morrow, and I must have a
good night's rest.

Or I rode in Ward's arms, when he went to salt the cattle, and sat in
the saddle while he threw the handfuls of salt on the weeds, and I
noticed all the wonders of the land into which we came. I saw the
golden-belted bee booming past on his mysterious voyage, and he was a
pirate sailing the summer seas. I heard the buzzing curse of the bald
hornet, and I wished him hard luck on his robbing raid. And the swarms
of yellow butterflies were bands of stranger fairies travelling
incognito. I knew what these fellows were about, but I said nothing. The
ancients were good enough folk, but their idea of perspective was
abominably warped. I gave them up pretty early.

The hills by the great Valley River are a quiet country, sodded deep,
with here and there an open grove like those in which the dreamers
wandered with a garland of meadowsweet, or the fauns piped when the
world was young. Through them, now and then, a little stream goes
laughing, fringed with bulrushes and beds of calamus and fragrant mint,
a narrow stream that runs chuckling through the stiff sod and spreads
dimpling over the road on a bed of white sand, for all the world like a
dodging sprite of the wood who laughs suddenly in some sunlit corner.

We splashed through one of these little brooks as the sun was setting,
and El Mahdi's feet sank in the white sand. I watched the crystal water
go bubbling over his hoofs and then pour with a gush into the shoe
tracks which held the print like a mould. We left a silver trail or, now
when the sun was slanting, a golden trail, big with the air of enchanted
ventures.

When we came on the brow of the hills flanking the approaches to the
Valley River it was already night. The outlines of the far-off mountains
were blending into one huge shadow.