"No. I shall ride out from town some day soon to look the place over," said his master with a pardonable lordliness of mien, becoming to a landed gentleman. "Our affairs at present lie in the town, for there is much to be settled before I take charge. Striker tells me the man who is farming the place is an able, honest fellow. I shall not disturb him. From what he says, my property is more desirable in every way than the land that fell to my father's widow. Her farm lies off to our left, it seems, and reaches almost to the bottomlands of the river. We, Zachariah, are out here in the fertile prairie land. Our west line extends along the full length of her property. So, you see, the only thing that separates the two farms is an imaginary line no wider than your little finger, drawn by a surveyor and established by law. You will observe, my faithful fellow,—assuming that you are a faithful fellow,—that as we draw farther away from the woods along the river, the road becomes firmer, the soil less soggy, the—If you will cast your worthless eye about you, instead of at these mud-puddles, you will also observe the vast fields of stubble, the immense stretches of corn stalks and the signs of spring ploughing on all sides. Truly 'tis a wonderful country. See yon pasture, Zachariah, with the cows and calves,—a good score of them. And have you, by the way, noticed what a glorious day it is? This is life!"
"Yas, suh, Marse Kenneth, Ah done notice dat, an' Ah done notice somefin ailse. Ah done notice dem buzzards flyin' low over yan way. Dat means death, Marse Kenneth. Somefin sho' am daid over yan way."
"You are a melancholy croaker, Zachariah. You see naught but the buzzards, when all about you are the newly come birds of spring, the bluebird, the robin, and the thrush. Soon the meadow lark will be in the fields, and the young quail and the prairie-hen."
"Yas, suh," agreed Zachariah, brightening, "an' de yaller-hammer an' de blue-jay an' de—an' de rattlesnake," he concluded, with a roving, uneasy look along the roadside.
"Do not forget the saucy parroquets we saw yesterday as we came through the forest. You went so far in your excitement over those little green and golden birds, with their scarlet heads, that you declared they reminded you of the Garden of Eden. Look about you, Zachariah. Here is the Garden of Eden, right at your feet. Do you see those plum trees over yonder? Well, sir, old Adam and Eve used to sit under those very trees during the middle of the day, resting themselves in the shade. And right over there behind that big rock is where the serpent had his nest. He gave Eve a plum instead of an apple, because Eve was especially fond of plums and did not care at all for apples. She—"
"'Scuse me, Marse Kenneth, but dem is hawthorn trees," said Zachariah, grinning.
"So they are, so they are. Now that I come to think of it, it was the red-haw that Eve fancied more than any other fruit in the garden."
"Yas, suh,—an' ole Adam he was powerful fond ob snappin'-turtles fo' breakfas'," said Zachariah, pointing to a tortoise creeping slowly along the ditch. "An' lil Cain an' Abel,—my lan', how dem chillum used to gobble up de mud pies ole Mammy Eve used to make right out ob dish yere road we's ridin' on."
And so, in this sportive mood, master and man, warmed by the golden sun and cheered by the spring wind of an April morn, traversed this new-found realm of Cerus, forded the turbulent, swollen creek that later on ran through the heart of the Gwynne acres, and came at length to the main road leading into the town.
They passed log cabins and here and there pretentious frame houses standing back from the road in the shelter of oak and locust groves. Their passing was watched by curious women and children in dooryards and porches, while from the fields men waved greeting and farewell with the single sweep of a hat. On every barn door the pelts of foxes and raccoons were stretched and nailed.