Away back in the past so dim and distant that only the most learned can talk of it intelligently, away in the time after the earth had risen from the warm waters and when the great reptiles had given place to animals, something like those which exist to-day, the hoofs of all the quadrupeds were split. The land was low and marshy then, and the split hoof best supported its owner on the yielding surface. As the earth protruded more and more, and dry and sometimes rocky land uprose, such beasts as frequented the hills found that their hoofs were changing slowly with the centuries. Hard and round the hoofs became as was best for the hill dwellers, but the beasts of the shores and lowlands retained the split hoof and still can tread the morass. This the Enchanted Cow knew. This, Sir Gladys Rhinestone, who had studied natural history, knew as well.
It was four in the morning by the great clock of the Castle when Sir Gladys stood in the center of the stone-paved courtyard and wound his horn. At the sound every man in the Castle and its surrounding buildings, and on the farms about, became astir, and soon Sir Gladys had his trusty henchmen a dozen deep about him. His words of command sent them scattering in all directions, and sunrise beheld a sturdy band, headed by Sir Gladys, leaving the Castle Gate and turned in the direction of the Black Tarn. With the men marched fifty of the great red oxen of Rhinestone, and upon their mighty shoulders they bore the heavy nets and boats of the once lucky fisherman of Ken Water.
Sir Gladys had taken the White Cow's hint, and set the split hoof to do what the whole hoof could not accomplish.
A messenger was sent to the Moated Grange requesting the Lady Floretta to visit the shore of the Black Tarn, and thither the procession moved and soon the Tarn was reached. Then followed a scene of which the story was told for years, for it was something worth the seeing. The great tractable oxen, encouraged doubtless by the Enchanted Cow who stood knee-deep in the oozy margin awaiting them, bore out bravely into the black waters through reeds and sedge and yielding mud and made a mighty splashing toward the center of the lake where in a semicircle were gathered the fishermen with their boats and nets. The waters near the shore were churned into a foam, and the watchers looking outward could see the long wakes of the frightened sturgeon as they fled to certain capture.
And the nets were filled to the overflowing; so heavy were they that the great oxen could scarcely draw them to firm land. So the great work was accomplished, the Lady Floretta and her maidens coming in time to see it all. There were fish enough to furnish caviare enough it would seem for half the world.
It was well that their two estates joined, for while during the fishing, the Lady Floretta and Sir Gladys had been sitting on the strand of the Black Tarn—Sir Gladys' cloak around the Lady, for the day grew chill—they had declared each to the other their determination to join their lives and their fortunes together from that hour, and so it came to pass that, by the time the fish eggs were turned into caviare and sold and the money was in hand to pay Prince Rugbauer's taxes, Sir Gladys Rhinestone had made the Lady Floretta Beamish his bride, and what was good or ill fortune for one was the same for the other.
And this is also told, that, as for the Enchanted Cow, ever afterward she wandered at will on the moors in summer, and was well cared for at the castle or the Moated Grange in winter. And ever on the night of the Witch's sleep, the cow was visited in state by fair Sir Gladys and Lady Floretta, for nothing is more excellent than gratitude.
CHAPTER XVIII
LOVE AND A ZULU