ned at the name of Elijah, and the girl caught her breath.
But before she could speak they broke out of a grove and came in view of
a wide meadow across which four yoked cattle drew a harrow, smoothing
the plow furrows to an even, black surface.

It carried the girl far back; it was like opening an ancient book of
still more ancient tales; the musty smell completes the illusion. The
cattle plodding slowly on, seeming to rest at every step, filled in the
picture of which the primitive David Eden was the central figure.

"Yokes," she cried. "I've never seen them before!"

"For some work we use the horses, but the jerking of the harrow ruins
their shoulders. Besides, we may need the cattle for a new journey."

"A journey? With those?"

"That was how the four came into the Garden. And I am enjoined to have
the strong wagons always ready and the ox teams always complete in case
it becomes necessary to leave this valley and go elsewhere. Of course,
that may never be."

_CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT_

He brought Glani to a halt. They had left the sight of the meadow,
though they could still hear the snorting of the oxen at their labor, a
distant sound. Here, on one side of the road, the forest tumbled back
from a swale of ground across which a tiny stream leaped and flashed
with crooked speed, and the ground seemed littered with bright gold, so
closely were the yellow wild flowers packed.

"Two days ago," said David, "they were only buds. See them now!"

He slipped from his horse and, stooping, rose again in a moment with his
hands full of the yellow blossoms.

"They have a fragrance that makes them seem far away," he said. "See!"

He tossed the flowers at her; the wind caught them and spangled her hair
and her clothes with them, and she breathed a rare perfume. David fell
to clapping his hands and laughing like a child at the picture she made.
She had never liked him so well as she did at this moment. She had never
pitied him as she did now; she was not wise enough to shrink from that
emotion.

"It was made for you--this place."

And before she could move to defend herself he had raised her strongly,
lightly from the saddle, and placed her on the knoll in the thickest of
the flowers. He stood back to view his work, nodding his satisfaction,
and she, looking up at him, felt the old sense of helplessness sweep
over her. Every now and then David Eden overwhelmed her like an
inescapable destiny; there was something