"But are you sure, Zacharias? Are you sure? Isn't it possible that all these five masters of yours may have been mistaken?"
Zacharias could only stare in his horror. Finally he turned away and went silently across the patio.
"Ben," cried the girl softly, "why did you do it? Aside from torturing the poor man, what if this comes to David's ear?"
Connor snapped his finger. His manner was that of one who knows that he has taken a foolish risk and wishes to brazen the matter out.
"It'll never come to the ear of David! Why? Because he'd wring the neck of the old chap if he even guessed that he'd been talking about leaving the valley. And in the meantime I cut away the ground beneath David's feet. He has not standing room, pretty soon. Nothing left to him, by Jove, but his own conceit, and he has tons of that! Well, let him use it and get fat on it!"
She wondered why Connor had come to actually hate the master of the Garden. Sure David of Eden had never harmed the gambler. She remembered something that she had heard long before: that the hatred always lies on the side of injurer and not of the injured.
They heard David's voice, at this point, approaching, and in another moment a small cavalcade entered the patio.
CHAPTER THIRTY
First, a white flash beneath the shadow of the arched way, came a colt at full run, stopping short with four sprawling, braced feet at the sight of the strangers. It was not fear so much as surprise, for now it pricked its ears and advanced a dainty step or two. Ruth cried out with delight at the fawn-like beauty of the delicate creature. The Eden Gray was almost white in the little colt, and with its four dark stockings it seemed, when it ran, to be stepping on thin air. That impression was helped by the comparatively great length of the legs.